Poetry Analysis

To analyze a poem means to have a better understanding of the poem, may it be the meaning, or the feelings of the poet at the time of writing the poem. The following are the steps that would be taken in order to analyze the poems 'On My First Son' by Ben Jonson, 'The Flea' by John Donne, and 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell.

In analyzing the three chosen poems, the analyst would start by reading the poems, first silently, then out loud, and perform this task multiple times in order to get an understanding of the poem. As the poem is being read through silently the reader will write down thoughts and circle important words that are striking, repeated, or even confusing, to further analyze. This is shown as the reader read 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell. To show an understanding of the part of the poem that read, "An Hundred years should go to praise, Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast, But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, and the last age should show your heart. For, lady you deserve this state, Nor would I love at a lower rate". The reader would outline these words and write what was believed to be their interpretation of this as a breakdown of how much time the person would spend loving the parts of his mistress' body, including her heart.

The next step to analyzing these poems was that the basic subject of the poems was analyzed. To do this analysis, the analyst started by first considering the title carefully to find the relationship to the poem, and to possibly get a feel for the subject, tone, and genre of the poem. When reading the titles of the three chosen poems, with 'On My First Son' by Ben Jonson, the first initial thought of the subject of the poem was just a general thought that the poem was just about his first born son. This was just a plain subject, and not until the reader moved to the next step of reading the poem more thoroughly did the reader realizes the more precise subject of Jonson's mourning the loss of his son at a young age.

Further, the poems situation also needs to be considered when analyzing the subject of the poem. Take for instance in 'The Flea' by John Donne, and 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell, the situation in these poems is that a man is putting himself in the situation of trying to convince his partner to engage in intercourse with him. One should also consider whether the poem was built on comparisons or analogy such as with 'The Flea' by John Donne where the poet compares the bite of a flea on both the man and the woman to that of intercourse between the man and the woman. For the subject examination, the attitude of the author towards the subject of the poem should be analyzed. One must decide if the poet took a serious, humorous, hostile, ironic, witty or detached attitude towards the subject, such as with 'On My First Son', Ben Jonson took a serious attitude as this was a serious subject, making the poem appeal to the readers' emotions.

After examining the basic subject, the context of the poem should be examined. This should include any illusions to other literary or historical figures or events, and what the analyst knows about the poet, such as, what age the poet was when the poem was wrote, or other poems by the same poet. When analyzing the poem 'On My First Son' by Ben Jonson, it was found that the poem was written by Jonson in the year of 1602, and was written right after his son Benjamin died at the age of seven. Benjamin was Jonson's first born son, and Jonson wrote the poem as he reflected on the death of Benjamin and the pain he felt over such