How to analyse a poem: a step-by-step method

1. Read it twice. Once for the general sense, once slowly with a pen.
2. Subject: what is it about on the surface? What deeper idea might it be about?
3. Speaker and situation: who is speaking, to whom, and when? The speaker isn't always the poet.
4. Tone and mood: angry, nostalgic, bitter, tender? Does it change?
5. Language: imagery, word choices, sound. What do key words suggest?
6. Form and structure: the shape of the poem, stanzas, rhyme, rhythm, line breaks, and where it shifts.

Finish with a one-sentence answer to "what is the poet saying?" Your essay should prove that sentence.

Only use a term if you can say what effect it has.

The poem opens:

I wander thro' each charter'd street, Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

• Subject: a walk through London, but really a criticism of the suffering caused by those in power.
• Language: "charter'd" suggests the streets and even the river are owned and controlled; repeating it stresses that nothing is free. "Mark" and "marks" link the speaker noticing the suffering to the scars it leaves on people.
• Sound: the alliteration of "weakness" and "woe" sounds like a sigh of despair.
• Structure: a regular ABAB rhyme and steady rhythm, like the trudge of walking, suggest suffering that is relentless and inescapable.

Notice each point moves from what the poet does to what it suggests.

Use PEEL and zoom in on single words:

Blake presents London as a city controlled by the powerful. The repetition of "charter'd" suggests that even natural things like the Thames are owned and restricted. The word implies legal ownership, so the reader feels that ordinary people have no freedom. This links to Blake's anger at the way society's institutions treated the poor.

The last sentence uses context briefly to support the interpretation, rather than as a separate history lesson.

In AQA English Literature Paper 2 you compare a named anthology poem with one of your choice, and in the unseen section you compare two unseen poems. To compare well:

• Choose a shared theme (such as power, conflict or memory) and say how each poet presents it.
• Use comparative connectives: similarly, whereas, in contrast, both poets.
• Compare methods, not just ideas: "Both use first-person speakers, but…"
• Write integrated paragraphs that cover both poems, rather than one poem and then the other.

Don't panic if you don't understand every line. Start with the title, then what you do understand. Underline striking words, note any shift (a volta, a change of tense or tone), and look at the ending, which often holds the poem's main message. Tentative language shows thoughtful interpretation: perhaps, this could suggest, alternatively.

• Retelling what happens instead of analysing how it's presented.
• Feature spotting: "There is enjambment in line 4" with no effect.
• Writing generically: "the rhyme makes it flow". Say what effect it has in this poem.
• Assuming the speaker is the poet.