How would I analyse a poem?

Analysing poetry is a little bit different to analysing prose or drama and you can show that you understand this in your essay answer. Use PCQA (point, context, quote, analysis) as the structure to your answer; the point of using context is just to briefly say where in the poem you have taken the quote from. This is quite important because when you analyse a poem you should generally go through it chronologically, and contextualising your quotes signposts this to your teacher or examiner. When constructing an answer that analyses a poem, you should choose a few key points, such as discussion of nature, or gender, or the representation of an issue, such as death or poverty, and then find quotes that back up those points. This makes sure that your answer is led by points rather than quotes, which creates a stronger answer. You should also try to discuss poetic techniques in your analysis, such as rhyme and rhythm, to illustrate your understanding of the form of poetry. For example, you could discuss the use of rhyming couplets and how that ties in to the meaning of the poem, as it could suggest harmony and partnership, or, on the other hand, could suggest monotonous repetition. The rhythm of a poem is also important, such as Shakespeare's common use of iambic pentameter. Whilst recognising what rhythm the poet is using is helpful, you should also notice whether the poet changes their technique. For example, if a poet uses a regular iambic pentameter, and then suddenly changes to a monosyllabic line, it's important and perhaps signifies a change to the direction of a poem. Finally, choosing your quotes well will help you enormously. In an exam, you'll only have a short amount of time to write an answer, so choosing one quote that you can analyse in a lot of detail will save you a lot more time (and get you some good marks :) ) rather than choosing three different quotes that you can only analyse a little bit.