How do I analyse a poem?

There are 3 ways to attack analysing a poem in an exam question. The first way to do so is to look at form. Is it regular? Or is it changing? How does the form relate to the content? Is there a constant rhyme scheme, or is it changing? Is it, for instance, ABAB in the entire poem? Or does it change? If it does change, does this have a specific effect on the poem as a whole? For instance, take "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by world-famous poet T.S. Eliot. It begins in a lovely, rhyming way. "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky." I rhymes with sky. Form is matched with content: i.e. the way the words are arranged together is harmonious with the words themselves. We have a natural, romantic, dulcet image with a sweet rhyme scheme. But then, the next line interrupts the constant rhyme scheme: 'Like a patient etherised upon a table.' The rhyme scheme and the romantic imagery are briefly interrupted. Another way to think about form is not how it changes within a piece, but how it is generally. For instance, in W.H. Auden's poem 'Miss Gee'. It is written in a ballad form. This means it is in iambic tetrameter. (de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM) and it occupies an ABAB rhyme scheme. Here is the first stanza (stanza means a group of lines): Let me tell you a little story About Miss Edith Gee;She lived in Clevedon Terrace At number 83.This ballad form is lively, rhythmic and fun. Notice the horror when we get to a later stanza: She bicycled down to the doctor,And rang the surgery bell;'O, doctor, I’ve a pain inside me, And I don’t feel very well.'The tension between the content and form is huge. She has cancer and is dying. Auden very cleverly inverts the form to lower the readers guard. The diagnosis is thus much more shocking.The final way we can attack a poem is by searching for devices. Not just the standard metaphors, similes and alliteration; but more complex ones, like aposiopesis. All this word means is breaks in speech: pauses, if you will. Marianne Moore utilises aposiopesis well.I too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond     all this fiddle.  Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one     discovers that there is in  it after all, a place for the genuine.The constant interruptions of the natural rhythms of speech give this poem a jarring, interrupted feel.