How to Analyze a Poem: a close reading of W.B. Yeats’ poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree“

Most people are intimidated by poetry because they feel they need to understand a poem intellectually to enjoy it. But poetry is not a primarily intellectual art. It communicates to the entire human being. It addresses us simultaneously as people with intellects, emotions, imaginations, intuition, memory, and physical bodies. It addresses us in the fullness of our humanity. That being said, we can still analyze a poem if we want to. In this video I explain my personal approach on how to analyze poetry using W.B. Yeats’ poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree“ as an example. Teaching poetry can be difficult. This video is part of my series “The Art of Poetry“, a video series adapted from a class I used to teach at USC. In this video I explain how to read a poem and how to analyze a poem. I use a W.B. Yeats’ poem in this example, but my techniques can be applied to analyzing any poem. I will be slowly filming the full “Art of Poetry“ video series and compiling it on Youtube. You can find the series here: For more videos on poetry you can subscribe to my YouTube channel here: Twitter: @DanaGioiaPoet I do not own the copyright of the recording of Yeats’ reading “Lake Isle of Innisfree“.