How to Write an Essay on a Poem: Helpful Examples?

How to write an essay on a poem?

A student will normally write an essay on a poem to analyze and interpret the meaning of the poem from their perspective.  A student will normally choose a poem that has meaning to them personally to write about in an essay.  An essay that discusses a poem is called a Poetry Analysis Essay.

What is the purpose of the Poetry Analysis Essay?

• The writer of the essay will read a poem selected by their teacher or professor.
• The writer will write an essay on the poem discussing the significance of the poem.
• The essay will discuss the importance of “key” words in the poem.
• The essay will allow the writer to give their own personal interpretation of the true meaning of the poem.
• The essay will let the reader know what the poem is saying on specific ideas.
• The essay will discuss the elements of literature that the author uses to get their meaning across in the poem.

What are the major components of the Poetry Analysis Essay?

The essay on a poem should be written in such a way that the reader of the essay will get the true meaning of the poem without having to read the poem.  The poetry analysis essay should demonstrate the writer’s understanding of the poem.  The essay should show the writer was able to interpret the understanding of the poem in an efficient manner.

Here are the main components of the Poetry Analysis Essay:

• The first part of the essay shall be the Introduction: gives the title of the poem, gives the name of the author from the poem, brief biography of the author, and gives a brief summary of the topic and subject of the poem.
• The thesis statement should identify the literary elements to be discussed in the essay.  The thesis statement should be the last sentence in the Introduction paragraph.
• The second part of the essay shall be the Body: it discusses the elements of the poem that will be discussed, the number of paragraphs in the body will based on the number of elements that will be discussed in the essay, and each element discussed will have its own paragraph.
• The last part of the essay shall be the Conclusion: it shall restate the thesis statement (but will not do so word by word), the conclusion should show that the essay can answer the “so what” question asked by the reader, and it should discuss how the topic essay reflects the true meaning of the poem.