Aim for FiveEnglish Literature

Unit 5 · Topic 5.7

5.7 Writing about a poem: thesis, evidence and transitions

A poetry essay needs a defensible thesis about the poem's meaning, evidence quoted precisely from its lines, and commentary that explains how that evidence works. Transitions show how your ideas connect and build. This topic pulls the Unit 5 skills together into the full poetry analysis essay.

Key terms

  • thesis
  • evidence
  • commentary
  • transition
  • line of reasoning

The task

In the poetry analysis essay (Question 1), you read a poem and analyze how the poet uses literary elements and techniques to develop meaning. You get about 40 minutes, and the essay is scored out of 6: 1 point for the thesis, up to 4 for evidence and commentary, and 1 for sophistication.

A thesis about meaning, not devices

Your thesis should make a claim about what the poem means or how it develops an idea, not just list devices. "Rossetti uses imagery and a shift" is a list. "Rossetti's speaker moves from asking to be remembered to freeing her beloved to forget, suggesting that true love puts the other person's happiness first" is an interpretation.

Evidence and commentary

  • Quote short phrases and work them into your sentences.
  • Use line numbers and slashes for line breaks.
  • Explain specific words: their connotations, sounds, placement.
  • Connect each piece of evidence back to your claim and thesis.
  • Explain how more than one technique contributes to meaning; the top score in the evidence row asks for that.

Transitions show your thinking

Transitions are words, phrases or even whole sentences that show how ideas relate, so they make your line of reasoning visible. In a poetry essay, transitions that follow the poem's own movement ("At first...," "After the turn...," "By the final lines...") are especially useful because they show how meaning develops. The table groups common transitions by the relationship they show.

RelationshipTransitions
Addingmoreover, in addition, similarly, likewise
Contrastinghowever, yet, by contrast, on the other hand
Cause and resulttherefore, as a result, because of this, consequently
Time or orderat first, later, by the final stanza, after the turn
Moving to interpretationthis suggests, in other words, as a result, ultimately

A simple plan for 40 minutes

  • Read the poem twice; mark shifts, repeated words and striking images.
  • Decide what the poem is doing overall, then write a thesis (about 10 minutes for reading and planning).
  • Write two or three body paragraphs that follow the poem's development (about 25 minutes).
  • Save a few minutes to reread your thesis and topic sentences.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

  1. Example 1

    Thesis and body paragraph with transitions

    Christina Rossetti's sonnet "Remember" (in Goblin Market and Other Poems, 1862) begins: "Remember me when I am gone away, / Gone far away into the silent land" (lines 1–2) and repeats "Remember me" in line 5 and "remember me" in line 7. Then it turns: "Yet if you should forget me for a while / And afterwards remember, do not grieve" (lines 9–10). It ends: "Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad" (lines 13–14). Write a thesis and one body paragraph about how the speaker's attitude develops.

    Show the solution
    1. Step 1: Notice the structure: lines 1–8 repeatedly ask to be remembered; "Yet" in line 9 starts a turn.
    2. Step 2: Identify the contrast: the first half asks to be remembered; the ending prefers that the beloved "forget and smile."
    3. Step 3: Write a thesis about meaning, with complexity: the speaker's love is shown by giving up her own wish.
    4. Step 4: Write a paragraph that follows the poem's movement, using transitions like "at first," "yet" and "by the final lines."

    Answer: Thesis: In "Remember," Rossetti's speaker moves from pleading to be remembered to releasing her beloved from that duty, suggesting that the deepest love puts the survivor's happiness above the wish to be remembered. Body paragraph: At first, the speaker's request is urgent and repeated. She opens with "Remember me," returns to it in line 5 and again in line 7, and the repetition makes her fear of being forgotten unmistakable; the "silent land" of death sounds lonely and final. Yet at line 9 the poem turns. "Yet if you should forget me for a while" introduces a possibility she had seemed to dread, and instead of protesting, she offers comfort: "do not grieve." By the final lines, the reversal is complete: "Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad." The balanced pairs, "forget and smile" against "remember and be sad," show her weighing her own wish against her beloved's happiness and choosing the latter. In other words, the poem's turn reveals that her love is measured not by what she asks for but by what she is willing to give up.

Common mistakes

  • Writing a thesis that lists devices instead of making a claim about meaning.
  • Analyzing the poem in random order. Following its development (beginning, turn, end) makes your reasoning clear.
  • Using "also" as the only transition. Show contrast, cause and development.
  • Spending too long planning and running out of time for body paragraphs.

On the exam

  • To reach the top of the evidence-and-commentary row, explain how several techniques, such as repetition, a shift and word choice, work together to build meaning.
  • Exploring a tension in the poem, like the speaker wanting two opposite things, is one of the clearest routes to the sophistication point.

Connected topics

Videos

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Check yourself

4 questions on 5.7 Writing about a poem: thesis, evidence and transitions. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
Line 5
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Line 10
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Claude McKay, “If We Must Die” (1919), from Harlem Shadows (1922)

Question 1 of 4

Which statement would be the strongest thesis for an essay on the poem?

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
Line 5
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Line 10
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
Line 15
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Line 20
Were toward eternity.

Emily Dickinson, “The Chariot” (“Because I could not stop for Death”), as printed in Poems by Emily Dickinson (1890)

Question 2 of 4

A student argues that the speaker was too busy with life to think about death until it came for her. Which line best supports this claim?

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
Line 5
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
Line 10
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130, from Shake-speares Sonnets (1609). “damask'd”: mixed in color. “reeks”: is breathed out (not an insult in Shakespeare's day). “belied”: misrepresented. “compare”: comparison.

Question 3 of 4

Which claim about the poem is most defensible?

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Line 5
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Line 10
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside them in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
Line 15
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
Line 20
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart—
Line 25
He saw all spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
Line 30
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

Robert Frost, “Out, Out—” (1916), from Mountain Interval (1916)

Question 4 of 4

A student argues that the speaker presents the accident almost as a meeting between two willing parties. Which line best supports this claim?

0 of 4 answered