Form concerns a poem’s design and conventions, including traditional sonnet patterns, dramatic monologue, ballad, ode and elegy. These categories can overlap. Sonnets address many subjects; odes can meditate as well as praise; elegies often mourn death or other loss. Free verse can contain local sound patterns without a governing metrical plan. In English study, blank verse commonly means unrhymed iambic pentameter.
Conventions can overlap
Structure
Describe stanza and line divisions, rhyme patterns and stress patterns. A couplet is a pair of successive lines, often rhyming. Enjambment continues syntax or sense over a line ending; a caesura is an audible pause within a line. A volta is a turn in thought or tone, whose place varies.
Ask how the opening, development and ending relate. A repeated or broken pattern may reinforce, complicate or contradict the words. Explain the actual passage rather than assuming short lines mean hesitation or regular rhyme means calm.
Voice: first-person narration establishes a speaker using I or we; it does not prove autobiography or intimacy. Third-person narration can be close or distant. Tone depends on diction, sound, syntax and situation, not grammatical person alone.
Sound first, interpretation second
Analysing effect
Move from an observable feature to evidence and a supported interpretation. An enjambed phrase may create momentum, delay or tension depending on the words and line ending. Use may or can where appropriate, then explain why the reading fits this passage.
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