Literary Analysis of a Poem

Choose a new poem to analyze from the assigned reading list, and title your post with the poem’s title. (The reading list is found in the Syllabus, and all of our course readings are in the class eBooks. Click on the book’s title in the Syllabus.) Do not use the poem you analyzed in Week 1’s discussion or essay assignment. You may use the following questions to develop a paragraph response to your new poem, or you may discuss another more appropriate literary element (e.g., imagery, characterization, theme) as best fits your selection:

· What are some of the key symbols and/or metaphors in the poem, and how are they used? 

· What are some of the meanings they convey to readers?

· How do these elements enrich the poem and deepen your understanding of its themes?

Below is an example of what the literary should look like.

Example Response Students often ask to see a model of what is expected, so here is an example post: “The Oven Bird” is a sonnet by Robert Frost, and the poem focuses on a bird that sings a sad song about death and loss. Some of the key images include variations on singing, the seasons, and foliage, such as leaves and flowers. The following lines illustrate the use of these images: “He says that leaves are old and that for flowers/Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten/He says the early petal-fall is past/When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers” (Frost, 2016, Lines 4-7). The images in the poem work together to tell a story about the oven bird, which has a loud, discordant song that “makes the solid tree trunks sound again” (Frost, 2016, Line 3). The bird sings about having lost its first set of young to predators, and now the bird must learn to go on living with great loss. The sad yet brave feeling of the poem is summed up in the final couplet: “The question that he frames in all but words/Is what to make of a diminished thing” (Frost, 2016, Lines 13-14).