Specificity

I believe that I best embraced the use of specificity in analyzing literature during our during our poetry unit. We were instructed to carefully annotate three of John Donne’s poems for homework.  With respect to one of the three poems, we were asked to write the prose meaning of each line of the poem and our initial interpretations of the poem and its meaning in a paragraph at the bottom of the page.   I began the assignment by circling each word for which I was unsure of the meaning.  I looked up the definition of the words and wrote those in the margin.  I then reviewed the poem again and underlined each passage that was unclear.  I considered those passages in the context of the poem to try to figure out the meaning that Donne was seeking to convey.  I then reread the entire poem again to consider the meaning of each phrase when considered in the context of the entire poem.

After thinking about the language of the poem and the context and order of each phrase, I reviewed the poem again and this time I focused on the meter of the poem.  I have struggled with the use of meter while interpreting poetry.  I was able to identify the meter and when Donne broke with the meter.  My progress with identifying meter has helped me as a student this year and I even used it on one of my AP Lit essays to argue a point of emphasis.  The process of carefully examining the poem’s structure, phrases and language to gain a comprehensive meaning of the poem helped me better understand the poem.

Annotation of “Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you” by John Donne