How to Write About Poetry

• 1. Who is the speaker? What kind of person is the speaker?

  The speaker is a womanizer who most desires unfaithful (or uncommitted) women.

• 2. Is there an identifiable audience for the speaker? What can we know about it (her, him, or them)?

  He is addressing a group of women, focusing – perhaps – on one who insists on constancy and fidelity.

• 3. What is the occasion?

  Apparently, a woman has expressed a commitment to him or asked one of him.

• 4. What is the setting in time (hour, season, century, and so on)?

  Nothing identifiable

• 5. What is the setting place (indoors or out, city or country, land or sea, region, nation, hemisphere)?

  Nothing identifiable

• 6. What is the central purpose of the poem?

  The central purpose is to establish a radical view of love free of genuine affection or sincere caring. Instead, the speaker seeks to celebrate promiscuity.

• 7. State the central idea of theme of the poem in a sentence.

  The most valuable form of love is the physical that seeks no intangible commitments or interdependence.

• 8. What is the tone of the poem? How is it achieved?

  The tone of the poem is flippant (or indifferent) in the first stanza, accusatory or complaining in the second, and condemnatory in the third.

• 9.

  • a. Outline the poem so as to show its structure and development, or

  • b. Summarize the events of the poem.

    Addresses women: Declaration of indifference to any quality in a woman – except fidelity.

    Addresses women: Protest that a woman’s fidelity will not torment him into faithfulness himself.

    Reflects on a conversation with Venus: Claims that love rules in his favor.

• 10. Paraphrase the poem. (See attachment.)

• 11. Discuss the diction of the poem. Point out words that are particularly well chosen and explain why.

Indifferent (title) one who has no bias, prejudice, or preference; impartial; disinterested

Know (15) Archaic. to have intercourse with

Travail (17) pain, anguish or suffering resulting from mental or physical hardship (but especially from childbirth)

• 12. Discuss the imagery of the poem. What kinds of imagery are used? Is there a structure of imagery?

  The visual imagery of lines 1 and 6 serves to clarify the catalogue of women.

  The auditory image of line 19 evokes a tone of complaint (both angry and sad)

• 13. Point out examples of metaphor, simile, personification, and metonymy, and explain their appropriateness.

  Lines 1 – 7 (the catalogue of women) consists of 12 metonymies, each representing an entire class of women.

  “Her whom abundance melts” (line 2) is a metaphor for a woman of extravagant wealth.

  “Spongy eyes” (line 6) is a metaphor for crying while “Her who still weeps with spongy eyes” is a metonymy for emotional women.

  “Venus” (line 20) is a personification of love that lends a sort of authority to the speaker’s view.

• 14. Point out and explain any symbols. If the poem is allegorical, explain the allegory.

  If the third stanza is taken literally, then “Venus” is a symbol (an allegorization) of romantic love.

• 15. Point out and explain examples of paradox, overstatement, understatement, and irony. What is their function?

  The central irony depends on the reversal of vice and virtue in the speaker’s value system.

• 16. Point out and explain any allusions. What is their function?

  The allusion to Venus in the third stanza should recall her own unfaithfulness to her

  husband, Vulcan.