Writing a first poem takes about forty minutes. Pick one specific moment, turn it into a few concrete images, and put those images in lines. That is the whole machinery you need on day one, and if you have never tried it before, this is how to write a poem for beginners without stalling in … Read more
A metaphor in a poem is a comparison that states one thing is another, without using “like” or “as” — so Emily Dickinson’s “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers” turns an abstract feeling into a living bird that perches in the soul. To identify a metaphor in a poem, read literally first, flag any line … Read more
Poem analysis is the practice of taking a poem apart into its pieces — speaker, language, imagery, devices, structure — and then explaining how those pieces combine to produce meaning. Learning how to analyze a poem for the first time takes less than most people expect: the whole job fits into six passes over one … Read more
To cite a poem in MLA format, put the poet’s last name and the line numbers you quoted in parentheses, then list the poem title in quotation marks, the book or website holding it in italics, the publisher or site, the year, and the page range or URL. It takes about ten minutes once you … Read more