How to Annotate a Poem: A Step-by-Step Method, With a Worked Example on a Short Blake Poem

Knowing how to annotate a poem is mostly knowing what to look for, one thing at a time. A poem does several jobs at once: it makes sounds, takes a shape on the page, builds pictures and changes direction, and a first read tends to blur all of them into a single impression. The method below separates them into five short passes with a pencil, then puts them back together as a statement of what the poem does. The worked example uses an eight-line poem by William Blake, quoted in full because it is in the public domain.

Before you start: a pencil and two readings

One pass, one question. The poem will wait.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center's handbook page How to Read a Poem opens with the instruction that matters most: read a poem with a pencil in your hand. Mark it up, write in the margins, circle important, striking or repeated words, draw lines to connect related ideas, and mark difficult words, lines and passages. It also advises reading the poem several times, both silently and aloud, listening to the sound and rhythm of the words.

Print the poem with wide margins, or copy it out by hand, which forces you to notice every line break. Read it once straight through without marking anything. Then read it aloud. Only then pick up the pencil. If you already use a set of reading marks, keep them; if not, the chart of annotation symbols and what each means gives a small key you can adopt.

How to annotate a poem, step by step

Each pass asks one question. Use a different mark for each, or a different color, so you can see the layers separately afterwards.

1. Title and situation

   Write a note beside the title: what it promises about subject and tone. Then answer the Wisconsin handout's questions in the margin: who is speaking, to whom, where, and what is going on.

2. Sound

   Circle rhyming words and link each pair with a line. Underline repeated consonant or vowel sounds. Read a line aloud and mark the stressed syllables lightly above it. Note anything that sounds harsh, soft, fast or slow.

3. Form

   Count the lines and stanzas and write the numbers at the top. Mark where sentences end and where they run over a line break. Note the punctuation that carries weight: colons, dashes in older texts, a single full stop.

4. Imagery and word choice

   Bracket each concrete picture. Box words that belong to one group, such as colors, weather or the body. List the verbs in the margin; the Wisconsin handout suggests this as a way to see the action of a poem.

5. Turns

   Draw a horizontal arrow at any point where the thought shifts: a new stanza, a but, a change of tense or speaker. In a sonnet, look for the volta, the turn of thought or argument.

6. Paraphrase and the so-what

   Rewrite the poem line by line in plain prose at the bottom of the page. Then write one sentence that answers the handout's last question: so what? What does the poem do?

What to mark in each pass

The term for a turn has a precise meaning in one form. The Poetry Foundation glossary entry for volta defines it as the turn of thought or argument in a sonnet: in Petrarchan or Italian sonnets it comes between the octave and the sestet, and in Shakespearean or English sonnets before the final couplet. Short poems that are not sonnets turn too, often at a stanza break, and the same arrow marks them.

A worked example: The Sick Rose by William Blake

William Blake published this poem in Songs of Experience, which the Poetry Foundation's biography of Blake dates to 1794, when he combined it with his earlier Songs of Innocence. It is in the public domain. The text below follows the Poetry Foundation's text of The Sick Rose, with its punctuation.

Title and situation

Margin note at the title: a diagnosis before the poem starts. The speaker addresses the rose directly (O Rose), the way you might speak to a person. The situation: something has got into the flower and is killing it.

Sound

Circle worm and storm (lines 2 and 4) and joy and destroy (lines 6 and 8), and join each pair. Only the even lines rhyme, so each stanza clicks shut on its last word. Note in the margin that joy rhymes with destroy: the pleasure and the ruin are bound by sound. Underline the hard k sounds in sick, dark and secret. Read aloud, most lines carry two strong beats, which keeps the poem quick and close to a chant.

Form

Write 8 lines, 2 stanzas of 4 at the top. Put a slash after sick. and after destroy.: the poem has two sentences, and the first is only four words long. The second runs from line 2 to line 8, and its main verb, Has found out, does not arrive until line 5. Mark the colon after storm: it holds the reader at the stanza break before the verb lands.

Imagery and word choice

Bracket the images: the worm, the night, the howling storm, the bed of crimson joy. Box the words of love and intimacy, bed, joy, love, secret, and note how odd they are in a poem about disease. List the verbs: art, flies, has found out, does destroy. The worm does all the acting; the rose only is.

Turns

Draw the arrow at the stanza break. The first stanza describes the worm; the second says what it has done. A second, smaller turn sits inside the last two lines, where love becomes the thing that destroys. Draw a line linking sick in line 1 to destroy in line 8: the poem begins with the symptom and ends with the cause.

Paraphrase and so-what

Paraphrase at the foot of the page: Rose, you are ill. A worm nobody can see, flying through a stormy night, has found your red bed, and its hidden love is killing you. So-what sentence, as an example of the kind of claim the marks support: The poem makes love and destruction the same act, and its rhymes and its delayed verb make the reader feel the damage arrive late, after it is already done. Every part of that sentence points back to a mark on the page.

Pitfalls when annotating poetry

• Jumping to the meaning. A theme written in the margin after one read is a guess. Do the four passes first and let the marks support the claim.
• Naming devices without effects. Alliteration in the margin is a label. Hard k sounds make the love sound harsh is an observation.
• Ignoring the line break. Where a line ends is a choice. Mark every place a sentence runs past one.
• Skipping words you think you know. The Wisconsin handout advises looking up any word you are even slightly unsure of, and using a historical dictionary for older poems, since meanings shift over time.
• Marking so much the poem disappears. Use light pencil and keep the marks small. Copy the poem twice if you need room.

Tips for annotating poetry

• Read aloud at every pass. Sound and rhythm are easier to hear than to see.
• Use one color per pass. It shows which kind of evidence you have most of. The highlighter color code can be adapted to the five passes.
• Annotate the title last as well as first. The Wisconsin handout suggests returning to the title after reading to reconsider how it relates to the poem.
• Keep the annotated copy. When you write the essay, the marked page is your evidence list. More reading guides for coursework are in the study guides section.

The same slow reading carries over to prose: close reading for patterns in a draft uses the method on essays, and turning highlights into notes shows how to keep what your annotations found.

Annotating a poem means slowing down enough to see its parts. Read it twice, once aloud, then make one pass each for sound, form, imagery and turns, and finish with a plain paraphrase and a single so-what sentence. The Blake example shows how eight lines can hold a whole argument once every rhyme, colon and verb is marked. Try the same five passes on the next poem you are assigned.