Tag Archives: analysis

If your birthday occurs between January and June, you will be analyzing the Robert Browning poem “My Last Duchess.” Using the TPCASTT strategy may be a helpful way to discern meaning within the poem. Ultimately, you will need to create and support an AP-style statement with information gleaned from the poem itself. Your AP statement should read as follows:

The writer (use the author’s name) employs X (articulate techniques and strategies) to reveal Y (the theme of the poem).

Here is the text of your poem:

My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning

If your birthday occurs between July and December, you will be analyzing the Matthew Arnold poem “Dover Beach.” Using the TPCASTT strategy may be a helpful way to discern meaning within the poem. Ultimately, you will need to create and support an AP-style statement with information gleaned from the poem itself. Your AP statement should read as follows:

The writer (use the author’s name) employs X (articulate techniques and strategies) to reveal Y (the theme of the poem).

Here is the text of your poem:

Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

One helpful method to get to the meaning of a poem is to use the TPCASTT process. This method walks you through the poem in a way that will help you unearth the meaning.

For this assignment, you will select two poems. One must be a pre-20th century work, while the other must be a modern (post-1900) poem. You will use the TPCASTT method with each poem to reveal its meaning. Please select unfamiliar poems for the assignment.

You may download a handout of the TPCASTT method from the AP Resources page.

To find poems, try the databases linked below:
Academy of American Poets
National Poetry Foundation
Poetry Out Loud

Your poem analyses are due at the beginning of class Tuesday, January 8. You should submit a copy of each poem along with the analysis, which may be handwritten or typed.