Sense
*Title of poem
*Publication date
*Information about the author
*Look up words you don't know (diction)
*Locate the normal word order (syntax)
*Inform yourself about all allusions
*Characterize the person or person's speaking (narrarator/characters)
*Construct the story of the poem (plot)
*Setting of the plot
*Descriptive images and sensory appeala
*Figurative language (similies, metaphors, personifications)
*Symbols
Sound
*Scan the poem and determine predominant metrical pattern or lack of one.
*Mark important caesuras
*Note sound deviced (alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme)
Structure
*Track the organization of ideas (arrangement, logical development)
*Note the method of organizeing lines (meter and rhyme; ideas and sound)
*Account for variations in line length
*Effect of end-stopped and enjambed lines
*How are the stanzas organized (rhyme scheme. fixed forms, ideas)
*If the poem is a fixed form, learn about its conventions;
-how does it adhere to its convenctions
*If the poem is fre verse, Indicate devices that give it structure
Sight
*Think how the look of the poem on the page affects you
*Explore the connections between the poem's appearance and its meanings.
