How to meet a poem cold

First encounter

Read the poem twice before the pencil moves, and the first time aloud in your head: poems are built for the ear, and rhythm, pause and emphasis carry meaning the eye skims past. On the second reading, mark only what surprised you. Surprise is data.

This section grows as the class materials arrive.

Voice and speaker

Establish who speaks, to whom, and from where. A speaker is not the poet; the gap between them is often where the poem lives. Ask what the speaker wants, what they avoid saying, and whether the poem trusts them.

This section grows as the class materials arrive.

Form, metre and the shape on the page

Count what can be counted: lines, stanzas, the pattern of rhyme, where the sentences end against where the lines end. Then ask the only question that matters about form: what does this shape let the poem do, and where does the poem strain against it?

This section grows as the class materials arrive.

Image, sound and pattern

Track the images as a sequence rather than a heap: what recurs, what transforms, what arrives late. Listen for sound doing semantic work, echo, harshness, sudden softness, and treat every pattern you find as a promise the poem makes and then keeps or breaks.

This section grows as the class materials arrive.

From noticing to arguing

Choose the noticings that point the same way and build them into a claim about the whole poem. An unseen essay is not a commentary from line one to the end; it is an argument that happens to travel through the poem in the order that serves it.

This section grows as the class materials arrive.