How should I approach an unseen poem?

I tend to approach this with the help of what I call the Mamma Mia Mnemonic: 'Cher Found She Really Regretted The Dreadful Film'. Each word within this mnemonic represents a separate core poetic technique: content, form, structure, rhyme, rhythm, tone, diction and figures. I would encourage a student to use this framework to approach an unseen poem and improve their familiarity with techniques which fall into each category. I would then provide them with a list of these keywords for each category (e.g. metaphor, simile, synecdoche, metonymy for 'figures') and encourage them to learn at least 5 relevant key terms for each poetic technique. 

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Answered by Lucy D. English Literature tutor

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