Poem Explanation Generator - Analyze Poetry for Free

💼 How to Use It the Tool?
📍 How to Explain Poetry?
📝 How to Write a Poetry Explication Essay
👀 Poem Explanation Example
🌐 Poetry Explanation Sites
🔗 References

💼 Poem Explanation Generator: How to Use It?

Follow the 3 steps below to generate a poem explanation with this free tool in a couple of seconds:

Add the poem. Note that the text should be at most 700 words.
Click “Explain”. Relax and let the poem explanation generator do all the work.
Get the result. It should be used for research and reference purposes only.

📍 How to Explain Poetry?

Even if you’re new to poetry, you can tell its difference from prose at first glance.

Why so?

Because poetry is structurally different from prose, featuring more literary devices and layers of meaning that a reader should decipher in the process of poetry analysis.

Besides:

Poems possess the rhythm and rhyme that prose doesn’t have, and many more elements should be covered when analyzing a piece of poetry.

Those who want to automate this process can use our free poem explanation generator. Still, it’s useful to learn the specifics of poetry analysis, the summary of which is available in further sections.

According to a guide by the UNC writing center, the process of revealing a poem’s meaning can be divided into 3 steps:

Looking at the big picture
Understanding the structure
Conducting line-by-line analysis

Let’s look at these steps in more detail.

Step 1 – Look at the Big Picture

Any analysis should start with the larger picture or impression you have from reading the poem.

What is the overall feeling you have after completing the reading?
Is the poem joyful or romantic?
Is it depressive and pessimistic?

The general effect may be evaluated by considering the thoughts and emotions you have.

Next, it’s vital to identify the speaker or the person the poem addresses. Sometimes, the speaker and addressee are not easy to locate, or there are none. In this case, you may skip this analysis element, but if there is a speaker, their role is essential in the analytical process.

Finally, you can start the analysis from the general message or theme of the poem.

It may be:

Sorrow
Mourning
Loneliness
Happiness
Pursuit of life’s meaning

In other words, it can be literally anything. Thus, understanding the guiding theme allows you to jumpstart the analysis and proceed to more concrete poetic elements.

Step 2 – Understand the Structure

After broader analysis, you may get down to the structural details of the poem to offer more tangible and specific interpretations.

What figurative language and poetic means does the author use to render their ideas and create the intended effect?

At this stage, it’s vital to consider the following elements:

Syntax	What sentence types and structures does the author use to achieve the dramatic effect of their piece of poetry?
Rhetorical means	What ideas does the author argue? Do they have standard or conflicting ideas and means to prove them?
Poetic form	What poetry type is it? A sonnet, an ode, a pantoum, or an elegy?
Figurative language	What language means does the author use to deliver their message through poetry? Do they use new or old, outdated language? Is the language ambiguous or clear?

Step 3 – Analyze It Line by Line

Now, it’s time to analyze the piece of poetry line by line to determine the sound patterns, like rhythm and meter. Poetry is highly structural, and deciphering those structural patterns is an important part of poetry analysis.

Patterns you should look out for are as follows:

Rhetorical	Repetition of the same words or phrases creates a unique rhetorical pattern and format.
Visual	The lines’ visual organization on the page may be a source of interesting patterns on its own.
Sound	Words’ arrangement and stress may create a unique sound pattern, like alliteration or assonance.
Rhyme	Poetry should have a rhyme, a unity of ending words in specific lines. There are various rhyming options, and your analysis should identify this poem’s rhyme.
Rhythm	Poems have a distinct rhythm and meter, which is the sequence of stressed and non-stressed syllables, and your task is to identify it (some examples are iambic, trochaic, anapestic, etc.).

📝 Poetry Explication Essay – How to Write It

After the thorough analysis you’ve completed using the stages above, it’s time to complete the analytical essay; this type of written assignment is called a poetry explication essay. We recommend following the same algorithm you had during preparation – starting with the broad issues and getting down to narrow specifics in further parts.

Here’s what it should cover.

Opening Paragraph

The essay’s introduction should present the poem, its author, and its broad theme and message.

Discuss all the details you have identified at the first step of analysis:

Who the speaker and addressee are,
What the main theme is,
What effect the author intends to arouse in the reader.

Besides, the introduction should contain a thesis statement with more concrete details of the analysis you will present in further sections.

Body Paragraphs

The body of your essay should deal with more concrete elements of the poem, such as:

Its rhyme and rhythm,
Syntax peculiarities,
The chosen form,
Figurative language the author uses to create a unique impact on the reader.

Support your claims with citations from the poem to show what you mean. Make sure to dedicate a paragraph to every analytical aspect and avoid putting it all together in one section; it may confuse the audience.

Conclusion

There are several options for ending your explication essay:

Focus on the most pronounced elements of the poem and the emotional effect they cause.
Conclude with the analysis of the poem’s final lines – usually the most impactful and emotional.
Recap the key points of your analysis and identify the author’s unique style and approach elements.

👀 Two-Headed Calf: Poem Explanation Example

The poem Two-Headed Calf was written by Laura Gilpin. It is a free-verse poem that tells the story of an unfortunate two-headed calf – a living creature that has limited time to enjoy his short life because he will be killed and brought to the human gaze as a freak. The poet skillfully juxtaposes the moments of calm joy and the doom awaiting the calf because he was unfortunate to be born different from the human perception of the normal.

The poem contains two stanzas – one three-line stanza (tercet) and one six-line stanza (sestet). The poem has no identifiable rhyme scheme, as the author uses a free-verse style of arranging the poetic pattern. Yet, the poetic structure is achieved with the help of an easily identifiable visual pattern – the lines have identical length and punctuation.

Laura Gilpin uses a variety of figurative language means to achieve the dramatic effect and depth of meaning in her poem. For instance, the reader can identify enjambment – an unexpected cutoff point – between the first two lines of the first stanza. Alliteration is also present in several parts of the poem, with the words “boy” and “body” and “stares” and “sky” sharing their starting sounds and creating a distinct sound pattern. Other figurative means include vivid imagery and caesura – middle-line pause in the stanza.

The poem’s ending is serene and beautiful, showing that the calf has a unique vision of the world due to his two heads. The author preserves a tranquil and positive tone by the end of the verse to reveal the happy moment the calf and his mother are enjoying despite the destiny awaiting them the next morning. This way, this short poem creates a complex and nuanced emotional impact on the reader, with all the beauty of nature and the ugly human order of things reconciled in just nine lines.

🌐 Poetry Explanation Sites

Here are the most reliable resources that contain poetry analysis examples:

Thank you for reading this article! We hope that this poem analysis maker is useful for you. You are welcome to try other free tools we offer: thesis statement helper, word changer, summarizer, title maker, and conclusion generator.

Updated: Apr 19th, 2024

🔗 References