How to Analyse a Poem (Edexcel GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

What does it mean to analyse a poem?

Analysing a poem means explaining what the poem means and how the poet creates that meaning. The poet’s methods are the choices the poet makes about language, form and structure.

Good poem analysis connects the two. Every time you point out a method, explain what that method adds to the poem’s meaning.

Why does poetry analysis matter in GCSE English Literature?

Poetry analysis is a core skill in your Edexcel GCSE English Literature exam, for three reasons:

• Poetry appears as both anthology poems and unseen poems, so you’ll use this skill more than once

• The same method works for any poem, so you don’t need a different approach for each one

• It builds the close reading that you also need for your plays and novels

This is the kind of poem analysis GCSE examiners look for: a clear idea about the poem, supported by close comments on the poet’s methods.

How to analyse a poem step by step

Here is how to analyse a poem in six steps. The steps work in this order because it’s much easier to explain a method once you know what the poem is about.

• Read the poem once for meaning, and sum up in one sentence what happens in the poem

• Work out who the speaker is, who they’re talking to and what situation they’re in

• Pick out the key images and word choices, and note what each one suggests. You can annotate directly on the poem for this step

• Look at the form, including the type of poem, the length of the lines and stanzas, and any rhyme

• Look at the structure, including where the poem changes in tone or focus, what is repeated and how the poem ends

• Decide on the poet’s big idea, and link that idea to the question you’ve been asked

If you’re unsure what to look for when analysing a poem, steps 2 to 5 give you a checklist of the speaker, the language, the form and the structure.

How to work out the speaker and voice

The speaker isn’t always the poet, so call the voice of the poem “the speaker” in your essays. For example, in ‘The Man He Killed’, Hardy’s speaker is a soldier who imagines meeting the man he shot at an inn. He says they “should have sat us down to wet / Right many a nipperkin!” The casual slang makes the poem sound like a story told to friends. When the speaker says “I shot him dead because – / Because he was my foe”, the casual voice starts to break down, which shows that he can’t justify the killing. The dash and the repeated “because” make him sound as if he’s searching for a reason.

How do you work out what a poem means?

Start with the title, the ending and any shift, because poets often put the most important idea in one of these places. For example, the title ‘Nettles’ sounds like a poem about a garden weed. However, Scannell ends with the line “My son would often feel sharp wounds again”. The ending suggests the poem is about a parent who can’t protect his child from pain, however hard he tries.

How to analyse form and structure in poetry

You don’t need to name a metre to write well about form and structure. Notice the shape of the poem, such as a line that is much shorter than the others, rhyme that breaks its pattern, or a volta.

For example, Barrett Browning writes ‘Sonnet 43’ in the traditional sonnet form. Her speaker opens with a question, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!”, and then repeats “I love thee” as she lists them. The final line then moves beyond life itself, when the speaker promises “I shall but love thee better after death.”

Enjambment can create a sudden change. In ‘Nettles’, Scannell’s speaker cuts down the nettles “Till not a nettle in that fierce parade / Stood upright any more”. The line break leaves the nettles standing like soldiers on parade for a moment before the next line cuts them down, so the reader feels the shock of the change.

What is the SMILE method for poetry analysis?

SMILE poem analysis uses an acronym to remind you what to look for. One common version is Structure, Meaning, Imagery, Language and Effect.

SMILE is useful for annotating, because it helps you check that you’ve noticed each type of method. However, writing one paragraph for each letter separates the poem’s meaning from its methods, so plan your paragraphs around your ideas about the poem, not around any fixed writing frame.

Analysing a poem you’ve studied and an unseen poem

The six steps work for both. With an anthology poem, you already know what the poem means, so spend more time on its methods. With an unseen poem, follow the steps in order, and expect your first reading to change as you read more closely.

What does a poem analysis look like?

Here is the six-step method applied to ‘Neutral Tones’ by Thomas Hardy.

First-read notes

• Meaning: the speaker remembers standing by a pond with a lover on a winter day, as their love was ending

• Speaker: the speaker talks to the lover directly (“Your eyes on me”), in a bitter, flat tone

• Language: the colours are drained, with a “white” sun and “gray” leaves

• Structure: the final stanza jumps forward to “Since then”, then returns to the pond, the sun and the tree from the opening

• Big idea: the end of this relationship taught the speaker that “love deceives”

A strong analytical paragraph

Hardy presents the end of the relationship as something that drains all feeling from the speaker’s world. In the first stanza, the sun is “white, as though chidden of God”, as if even the sun has been scolded and has lost its warmth. The lover’s smile is “the deadest thing / Alive enough to have strength to die”, which is a paradox. The paradox suggests the love was barely alive, and its only remaining strength was the strength to end. Structurally, the final stanza returns to the “pond”, the “sun” and “a tree” from the opening. This circular structure suggests the speaker is trapped in the memory, because every later lesson that “love deceives” takes the speaker back to that winter day.

How to write about the effect of a poetic technique

The effect of a technique is what the technique makes the reader think or feel. A strong comment on effect also links that effect to the poem’s meaning, so the examiner can see why the technique is significant.

What are the common mistakes when analysing a poem?

• Retelling the poem line by line: a summary leaves no room to analyse the poet’s methods, so it earns few marks

• Technique spotting: naming a technique without explaining its effect earns very little credit, because the Edexcel mark scheme rewards comments on each method’s “effect on the reader”

• Ignoring form and structure: writing only about language means you miss two of the three types of method you’re able to analyse

• Guessing about the poet’s life: inventing a link to the poet’s biography wastes time and can lead you to misread the poem

• Missing the shift: describing only the mood of the opening leaves your interpretation incomplete, and it may contradict the ending

Analysing poems in your Edexcel GCSE English Literature exam

Edexcel assesses your poem analysis through AO2 in both poetry questions. AO2 asks you to “analyse the language, form and structure used by a writer to create meanings and effects, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate”. The anthology question also assesses context (AO3), and the unseen question also assesses your personal response to the poems (AO1).

Both poetry questions are on Paper 2 (19th-century Novel and Poetry since 1789):

The unseen poetry question doesn’t assess context, so spend your time there on the poems’ meaning and methods. It asks you to compare “the ideas in the poems”, “the poets’ use of language” and “the poets’ use of form and structure”.