How can I analyse poetic form to help me in an essay?

Ostensibly you have to analyse how the form interacts with the poem's thematic content and how that affects your arguments: does the form prove/disprove, agree/disagree with any of your major points, or indeed with suggestions made by the author themself? Poetic forms are often heavily associated with thematic content - the sonnet with beauty and/or love being probably the most common. Does the sonnet in front of you discuss love or beauty? If it does mention so; if it doesn't what does it discuss and why is it interesting that it has fought against literary norms? If the poem does not fit any defined overarching form types how does this affect your reading? Is there a regularity and does that relate to any themes you have identified?Next look more closely: rhyme scheme and meter. Again if the poem appears to conform to a established form or an apparently regular one, does anything differ from what you would expect? Are any lines hyper-metrical/truncated? Do lines not rhyme when they should? Now again link form to content. What is the line saying and why does this deviation occur here. For example if a hyper-metrical line is discussing awkwardness, form is reflecting content, highlighting its significance. If, however, the noun 'harmony' breaks the rhyme scheme, form seems to be undermining content - is the poem exploiting narrative faults or hypocrisy? This becomes slightly more awkward with free verse where there are few rules to break, but approach it similarly: if two lines rhyme why those two? Is the author addressing a thematic/idealistic link between the two? Effectively everything comes down to analysing how form interacts with content. Whether supportive or subversive, how does the form influence the way you interpret the meaning of the poem.