Difficult poetry

Abstract

I have suggested so far in this book that analysing poetry is a fairly straightforward matter, and up to a point this is true. It is easy to spot a central theme in a poem and easy to see at least some of the ways in which the poet brings his or her theme to life. Looking closely at the words on the page is bound to result in a keener understanding of both the poem and the broader characteristics of the poet’s work. There might be occasions when you feel that your progress is slow, but the more you practice analysing poetry the more confident you will become. There might be times, however, when you feel that you are getting nowhere, times when you feel unable to make any progress because of the difficulty of the poems that you are trying to analyse.