Selections from Insight into Poetry, Rhetoric and Prosody (based on my lecture classes)

prepared to help my students to genuinely become “ students of literature.”

– Afruza Khanom

Analysing Poetry : Terms to Know 1

Literature has always been a part of our lives in many forms than one, at times making
us laugh, at other times making us cry and gradually opening our eyes to the world
around us. But it is not enough for a student of literature to dwell upon the surface of
things. In order to truly comprehend the richness of any literary piece of world literature
the student has to first tutor him/herself in the special terms used in this particular
discipline. This will enable him/her to speak more efficiently upon the subject in question.
So, before going on to discussing any selection of poetry, it is proper to familiarize the
student with the terms that s/he will be using as tools of the trade.

A. Basic Terms
• Atmosphere / Mood : The atmosphere of a literary piece is the mood or
feeling it portrays. And, mood signifies a state of mind at a particular moment.
Atmosphere and mood mean more or less the same thing but because a poem is
considered to portray a specific moment in time, mood is the most commonly used
word to refer to the feeling or atmosphere created in a poem.
The mood is created in a poem by the use of specific word combinations that
create images, create sound effects and represent ideas that build up a single mood
or a combination of moods within a single poem. For example, if we look at the
following lines –

Pike, three inches long, perfect

Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies.2

The words that immediately come to our notice in this stanza are tigering, killers,
malevolent, grin and flies. The combined effect of these words gives the reader the
1
Note: The selection of these terms has been limited to those which are essential in their 1st yr of studying
poetry.
2
This is the first stanza of Ted Hughes’ poem “ Pike.”
 impression that the pike3 , the subject of this poem, is not at all harmless. Rather,
there is a sense of danger and an uncanny feeling of fear surrounding it. This feeling
is the mood of the poem.

• Connotation and Denotation: The denotation of a word refers to its exact

meaning as represented in the dictionary. On the other hand, the connotation of a
word refers to its associative meanings. As words are used on a day to day basis
they tend to gather certain associative meanings in relation to the experience
connected to them. For example, the word “mother” denotes- the woman who gave
birth to a child. Yet, the associations that are immediately made with the word are -
care, love, protection, security, sympathy, warmth, tenderness and a host of other
emotions and ideas. All these are the connotations of the word -mother. Poetry , in
many ways, deals with the connotations of words.

• Objective : When a literary piece is said to be free of authorial intervention

then it is regarded as objective. Objectivity, therefore, consists in the poet or author
remaining outside his text. This is only possible if he refrains from passing judgement
and professing his own views or moral stance directly or through the mouth of a
persona. For example, Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is objective because it
tells the story of a duke and his relationship with his wife. It is not the poet speaking
through the speaker.

• Subjective : When a literary piece reflects the views of the author or is set on
the basis of the author’s personal experience then it is regarded to be subjective. A
subjective piece of work clearly portrays the poet’s thoughts and views. For example,
Wordsworth’s, “ I wandered lonely as a cloud” is subjective because it renders his
thoughts and feelings about life and nature.

• Tone : The tone refers to the emotional colouring of a literary piece, achieved
through his selection of language and technique, which indicates the poet’s attitude
towards the subject and his readers. The reader can identify the tone of a piece by
looking at the way the topic or situation is presented. Commonly used adjectives used
to discuss tone are: aggressive, innocent, intimate, formal, sympathetic, intolerant etc
indicating the relationship between object and speaker. For example,

3
A type of fish.
 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lively and more temperate.4

These first lines of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets reveal a tone which persists
throughout the sonnet i.e. a tone of adoration. But poems may also have shifts in tone.
For example, In Gray’s elegy the tone of lamentation that begins it , is not persistent
throughout. It fluctuates from lamentation to anguish then to consolation.

• Persona : The persona is an imaginary speaker who is created by the poet

according to the necessity of his work. The persona is, therefore, distinct from the poet
himself. At times the poet may use the persona as his mouthpiece. In such a case,
some views reflected by the persona may be similar to those that the poet holds. The
persona is expressed as the first person “ I .” Examples of persona are the speakers in
Robert Browning’s monologues.

• Repetition: Poets sometimes repeatedly use the same word, phrase, idea or
image in their poems to emphasize a certain point or thought. For example,
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.5
In these lines, the desolation of the desert has been emphasized through the repetitive
use of synonymous words such as, nothing, decay,wreck, boundless and bare. These
words intensify the image of waste and impermanence that ultimately affects upholds
the theme of the poem.

• Speaker: The one who speaks. The speaker in a poem may be a created persona
(character) who describes things from a certain point of view (usually in the first person
‘I’) or it may be the poet himself. The reader has to be careful about wrongly identifying
the thoughts and ideas portrayed in a literary piece as the poet’s own.

• Stanza: A stanza is the division of the lines of a poem into groups which form the
basic structural unit of the whole. It is equivalent to the paragraph division in prose. A
poem is usually divided into stanzas according to its form, i.e. the type of poem and
the rhyme scheme used.

• Theme: The central idea of a literary piece. There may be many themes developed
simultaneously in a literary piece. Love, jealousy, childhood, death, old age etc are

4
These lines are from Shakespeare’s “ Shall I compare thee . . . .”
5
The concluding lines of Shelley’s “ Ozymandias.”
common themes in literature. The theme is not what happens in the poem but what
those happenings or images imply. For example, Adrienne Rich’s poem “ Aunt
Jennifer’s Tigers” is about a woman who is dominated by her husband and who finds
relief through embroidering tigers onto the screens of her home. But, the theme is -
women’s freedom. So, the theme is actually the idea that lies beneath the surface of
the poem.