English Language Competency - Understanding Unseen Poems

Five steps to analyse an unseen poem

Here are five steps that you can use to deconstruct an unseen poem and finally to help you to answer the questions in the language paper.

Step One:

What the poem is about.....

What is the subject of the poem?
Who is speaking?
Who is the narrator speaking to?
where does it happen?

Step Two:

The themes and message.

What is the purpose of the writer for writing this poem?
Is it relevant to the society that the readers live in?
Does it have any emotional response in the readers? What is it?
Analyse the main message of the poem with evidence.

Step Three:

Attitudes and the feelings.

Analyse the different emotions and feelings of the narrator or poet.
What is the mood or atmosphere of the poem (ex: sad, angry, etc.) ?
Identify the different poetic techniques that show these attitudes and feelings.

Step Four:

Deep Analyse of the Poetic Techniques

List the poetic techniques that you come across in this poem (e.g. metaphors, similes, caesura, enjambment, alliteration, juxtaposition, personification, etc.).
How has the poet shown these feelings through the poetic techniques that you listed?

Step Five:

Let's explore your personal response!

How do you feel about the poem?
Have you ever experiences this in your life?

These steps with unseen poems can be practiced over and over again until the students get through practice in analyzing the new poems. the poems in the syllabus can be approached first through these steps and that will give ample practice to analyse the poem as well as to get a clear idea on their own about the poems in their syllabus.