Ways to break down poetry?

Question:does anyone recommend any good ways to break down poetry? like determining is has iambic pentameter, if its a villanelle, a sonnet, if it has trochaic meter- like do you have a method of taking lines from a poem and not analyzing it, but breaking it down ines by line- explaining the process involved. tx.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: does anyone recommend any good ways to break down poetry? like determining is has iambic pentameter, if its a villanelle, a sonnet, if it has trochaic meter- like do you have a method of taking lines from a poem and not analyzing it, but breaking it down ines by line- explaining the process involved. tx.

Sure. You're not asking how to analyze a poem, but how to find it's form, meter, and line length, correct?

First, I'd determine the general beat of the poem. Most poetry doesn't have a rigid beat that it adheres to throughout the poem, but some do. A beat is made up of stressed and unstressed syllables. Different combinations of syllables make different beats, or feet:

iamb - unstressed stressed - daDUM
trochee - stressed unstressed - DUMda
anapest - unstressed unstressed stressed - dadaDUM
dactyl - stressed unstressed unstressed - DUMdada
spondee - stressed stressed - DUMDUM

On the poem, try to mark the stresses and unstresses of each line. Once you have everything marked up, try to group the beats into feet, and determine the average number of beats per line, and the most common foot used. To get the meter of the poem put the foot before the number of beats per line, written like so:

dimeter - two feet per line
trimeter - three feet per line
tetrameter - four feet per line
pentameter - five feet per line
hexameter - six feet per line

A full meter assesment would read like:

iambic pentameter - five unstressed/stressed beats per line
dactylic hexameter - six stressed/unstressed/unstressed beats per line

To find the form of a poem, consider the number of lines and its meter. For example, a sonnet has fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, usually with some alternating rhyme scheme. A villanelle on the other hand, has nineteen lines, any meter, and alternating rhyming refrains.

Hope this helps.

Dont have to answer this because I HATE POETRY!! I have always hated poetry.

when looking at your poem focus on these areas-

S- subject- what is the poem about
A- attitude- of the poet or character
L- language-contrast, similies, personification
T-tone-
S- style and structure e.g sonnet, Iambic pentameter

Try linking these together e.g why is the structure rigid? is this to do with the subject

Good Luck!- this got me through a-level english