How to Analyze and Annotate ANY Poem

hey there folks I'm Tim frus from the garden of English it seems to me that we are still on our poetry journey in my last video showed you how to break down poetry prompt but just because you can break down the prompt that doesn't mean that poetry has become any easier yet at least poetry is really hard even for me and read it all the time so I'm going to give you some strategies to read any poem thoroughly with or without prompt while do this I'm going to also go over how to annotate poem so that you can easily transl your markings into complex thesis statements and extra awesome topic sentences I'll cover the thesis and topic sentences in other videos so when it comes to learning to annotate let's do this let's do this thing I'm going to continue using Oz amandas as the poem for this series if you're interested in accessing the poem prompts and everything else that will be covered throughout this particular poetry track you just need to check out the document that I've posted right in the description below this video everything is there since Oz amandas is sonnet and only 14 lines I'm going to pop it up right on the the screen here so that you can remind yourself of what it says I'll also put link to version read by Brian Cranston in the description you'll definitely want to experience that awesomeness anyway here it is okay so how do we position ourselves to critically read this or any other poem well we actually just have to go through few steps I'm going to show you each step individually and this is how you'll want to originally practice and completing each step individually will get you used to what you need to do at all times you will eventually want to be able to do all of these steps simultaneously with any poem Above All Else the first step that you want to do is look for major shifts shifts in poems happen on multiple levels so there are many types that you can look for when you look for shifts you want to look for shifts in chronology images line length stanzas or stanza length punctuation verb tenses points of view literary elements contrasts and word connotations the goe actually has poster for identifying shifts and it looks like this it can actually be accessed in the description right below now when you're looking for shifts all you need to do is draw line when one shows up even if it's mid-sentence so I'm going to encourage you to pause this video right here and try to Mark shifts in ozam Indus pull up the poem and just think about where you can Mark shifts that you might see after you do this I'll show you where I've noticed some major shifts try it now when read oam India noticed the following shifts in line two the speaker shifts to telling the story of another speaker who traveled to far away land in line six The Narrative shifts from describing the broken image to focusing on the skill of the sculptor and the art that survives in line nine the poem shifts to focusing on the words of aamus himself and in line 12 the poem shifts to revealing that nothing of oas's Kingdom remains in the desert now you may not have had the same major shifts as me but as long as you can explain why you marked the shifts that you did you're doing this right you're amazing am amazing once you get used to marking shifts you'll want to shift to The Next Step In The annotation process this step will have you marking literary and poetic elements down the leand side of the page rather than just assuming that you know what literary and poetic elements are or what to Mark I'm going to provide you with list of literary elements right on your screen did you know that we have poster with these yep we do of course it's linked in the description down below this video now that's the same spot where you can see things like the like button and the Subscribe button and the super thanks button and the channel membership button and the link to the goe merch shop clicking any of those buttons can help us to continue to create free YouTube content to help you get through your English classes all right back to annotation steps rather than just telling you to practice labeling lit and poetic devices down the side I'm going to model this for you then you can try it with another poem I'd encourage you to use the poem for that he looked not aonor because it's also sign on it and it was used on the 2014 AP Lit exam now here's how I'd label lit and poetic elements down the left- hand side of the poem If Were annotating as I'm reading the first line I'm going to mark first person point of view and setting when get to the second line I'm going to Mark frame narrative because new speaker is introduced by the actual speaker in the poem and I'm going to put the word Cura there lines 2 through five I'm going to label imagery and characterization in lines 6 through 8 I'm going to label characterization as the poem explores the sculptor and the universal idea since the ideas of Art and survival are implied in lines 9- 11 I'm going to Mark monologue and characterization and for lines 12 through 14 I'm going to label setting imagery and Universal idea since desolation is referred to with these labels on the le- hand side I'm focusing on knowing what literary and poetic elements look like in poem now if you don't know what literary and poetic elements are here's way that you can Define them these elements are anything an author presents to convey the meaning of his or her text so literary elements and poetic elements can often be used interchangeably there are few elements that show up more in poetry than in other literature these are things like sound devices poetic forms Cura and enjam but know that you can talk about all literary and poetic elements when analyzing poetry without having to really differentiate between the two now that you've practiced the first two moves in annotating poetry it's time to move on to the third one this particular step will have you annotate understandings and observations down the right hand side of the page these observations are going to be abstract judgments you need to make inferences based on the literary elements displayed in the text that you see now rather than just asking yourself what can understand based on this text I'm going to give you some scaffolded questions so that you can know exactly what to ask so you can draw accurate inferences so when you're going to make observations that correlate with the literary elements and text that you've marked here's what you need to ask yourself based on this particular section of text that includes the literary elements that I've marked what can infer about speak speaker or specific character's traits speaker or character's relationship with others conflict or point of suspense or tension mood how this text influences or relates to other potentially future plot events how this language symbolizes or embodies the events in the story or the poem how this text reveals universal idea or insight and universal idea or Insight is just another way of saying theme with these questions you can actually make the following observations based on what we marked as important literary elements let me model what this looks like for you down the right hand side of our poem amandus the setting in line one sets up shift to the past and creates focus on an archaic atmosphere the cura in line two mimics the separation of the initial speaker into the frame narrative and the cura in line three symbolizes the broken image the second speaker is describing the imagery in lines 4 through five highlights how the man who the statue represents is someone whose cold spirited and authoritative and it reiterates that the image itself is broken line six characterizes the sculpture as being skillful and how his art has survived which will later contrast with the leader whose kingdom has not lines 6 through 7 introduced the universal ideas of Art and survival which are what this poem is about and line 8 continues to celebrate the artist skill that was able to mock up the Visage of the Tyrant lines 9 through 11 characterized oam Indus as narcissistic Tyrant and lines 12 through 14 introduce the Insight of desolation at the hands of time and that very little lasts these annotations will make writing topic sentences for any poetry essay incredibly easy so stay tuned for that video but for now we have to complete the last step of reading poetry and annotating now that we finished reading and dissecting the poem for poetic elements and meaning we're going to produce universal Insight this step has to be done after you read the poem and some people know Universal insights as theme so once you're done reading your poem all you have to do is list out universal ideas that the poem itself relates to Universal ideas are abstract Concepts that any work of literature focuses on and explores have whole video about finding these Linked In the description down below the thumbnail looks like this in the case of ozam Indus we want to identify these Universal ideas art power desolation destruction and time once we list out these ideas we want to ask based on this poem what's the relationship between some or all of these ideas answering this question will give us universal Insight or in other words thematic statement we can then attribute this to the poet to create this relationship you can use the template that's about to show up on the bottom of your screen to make sure that this is done right every time it's right here Universal insights interrelate multiple ideas so for ozam indas could write universal Insight statement that looks like this Shel writes amandus in order to illustrate that only art has the power to overcome the inevitable destruction that comes at the hand of time this is the most comprehensive way to digest poetry and with practice it becomes really really easy these annotations actually make writing about poetry incredibly easy so to see how all of these annotations translate into thesis statements and topic sentences you're going to want to watch these