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Poetry Analysis Rubric (Grades 9-12)
For a written analysis of a single poem, one to three pages, where students argue an interpretation rather than restate what happens. It separates the two things students conflate: naming a device and showing what the device does to meaning. Works for AP-style prose analysis prompts if you add the prompt's own required focus to the claim criterion.
- Grades 9-12
- Subject ELA
- 100 points
- 5 criteria
- Free to copy, print and adapt
| Criterion | Exceeds | Meets | Approaching | Beginning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interpretive Claim20 points | 18-20 ptsStates an arguable claim about what the poem does or means that another reader could disagree with, and names the technique or pattern the claim rests on ('the poem's shifting line lengths make the speaker's grief sound unfinished'). | 15-17 ptsStates a claim about the poem's meaning, tone, or effect that goes beyond plot and holds for the whole poem, not just one stanza. | 11-14 ptsSummarizes the poem's subject or lists devices used ('the poet uses metaphor, imagery, and alliteration') instead of asserting what the poem means. | 0-10 ptsReports the poem's literal events or the poet's biography with no statement of meaning anywhere in the essay. |
| Poetic Devices as Evidence25 points | 23-25 ptsNames at least three devices, quotes the line each appears in, and explains for each how it produces the effect claimed in the thesis rather than that it exists. | 18-22 ptsNames devices accurately, quotes the lines where they appear, and explains the effect of most of them in at least one sentence each. | 13-17 ptsIdentifies devices and quotes lines but stops at labeling ('this is a simile'), or mislabels one device (calls a metaphor personification). | 0-12 ptsNames no devices, or names devices without pointing to any line where they occur. |
| Close Reading of Diction and Imagery20 points | 18-20 ptsExamines individual word choices, noting connotation or a second meaning ('"harrow" carries both the plow and the torment'), and explains how the image appeals to a specific sense to build the poem's tone. | 15-17 ptsDiscusses at least two specific words or images by quoting them and explaining what feeling or picture they create. | 11-14 ptsQuotes lines and paraphrases them into plainer words without commenting on why those particular words were chosen. | 0-10 ptsDiscusses the poem's subject in general terms with no word or image quoted from the text. |
| Structure, Form, and Shifts20 points | 18-20 ptsIdentifies the poem's form or stanza pattern, locates the line where the poem turns (a shift in tense, speaker, punctuation, or tone), and explains what that turn does to the argument of the poem. | 15-17 ptsNotes one structural feature by line or stanza number, such as a shift, a repeated line, an end-stopped versus enjambed pattern, or the form, and connects it to meaning. | 11-14 ptsMentions structure as a fact ('this is a sonnet with 14 lines' or 'there are four stanzas') without linking it to what the poem is doing. | 0-10 ptsTreats the poem as prose; no reference to lines, stanzas, form, breaks, or shifts anywhere in the essay. |
| Quotation Mechanics and Writing Conventions15 points | 14-15 ptsQuotations are woven into the writer's own sentences, use slash marks for line breaks, cite line numbers in parentheses, and the essay stays in present tense with fewer than three surface errors. | 11-13 ptsQuotations are punctuated correctly and cited by line number; sentences are complete with errors that do not interrupt reading. | 8-10 ptsQuotations stand as their own sentences or lack line citations, or the essay slips between past and present tense when describing the poem. | 0-7 ptsQuotations are unmarked or run together with the writer's words so the reader cannot tell whose language is whose. |
Total: 100 points across 5 criteria.
How to use it
- Poetic Devices carries the most weight, but read for the Interpretive Claim first. A device hunt with no claim will look busy and still deserve the 11-14 band.
- Ban the phrase 'the poet uses X to show Y' for one draft. Students who cannot lean on that sentence frame have to state what the effect actually is.
- For a timed AP-style response, cut Quotation Mechanics to 5 points and move 10 to Close Reading; handwritten timed work should not lose points for citation format.
- If the class read the poem aloud, ask for one observation about sound (rhyme, meter, consonance) inside Poetic Devices so it is not all imagery.
What students most often get wrong
- Listing devices in a scavenger-hunt paragraph and never saying what any of them do to the poem's meaning.
- Paraphrasing the poem line by line, which reads as a translation rather than an analysis.
- Treating the speaker as the poet, so the essay argues about the author's life instead of the voice inside the poem.
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