Perhaps you are a poetry teacher and want to explain a poem to your students. You want your students to understand the poem's insights, yet summarizing a poem is not easy. You can easily misplace the meaning, especially if you hurry and ignore important tips in a bid to beat time.
Nevertheless, the poem and summary are evolving and should not give you sleepless nights. Several techniques and poem summary examples can get you started like never before. In this article, we show you everything you should know about writing a summary of a poem.
In this article
Part 1. What Is Poem Summary?
A poem summary is nothing new to droves of people, especially those who love literature or express their feeling and opinions poetically. Like any other summary, a poem summary highlights a poem's key elements and gives readers an overview of the poem. It offers a short and crisp explain nation of the respective poem.
When you read poetry summary, you easily obtain the mood, theme, symbolism, and language. A poem summary is all that is in the poem in a compressed manner.
Writing a poem summary is not always a walk into the park. Certain crucial tips must be given deserved attention. Otherwise, you will misplace the poem's meaning while trying to compress it.
Part 2. What Should Be Included in a Poem Summary?
Writing an up-to-par poetry summary demands standards. A standard poem summary has essential parts, and you can't afford to omit them in your poem summary. Some of these crucial parts of a poem summary include:
Title- This is obviously the poem's title, so you don't have to struggle to find a summarized title.
Introductory paragraph- an introductory paragraph is the gateway to the poem summary. It tells you what the poem is about and aspects of the poem, such as nature, type, and tone. It prepares you with the right mood for the poem.
Main body- as the name suggests, the main body captures the poem's central idea or flesh. This section communicates what the poet is trying to convey without writing all the statements in the poem. This is the gist of the poem and must be given deserved attention.
Conclusion- This is often the last part of a summary. It wraps up the poem, and you can include opinions, reviews, and appeals.
How To Write a Poem Summary
Traditionally, people summarize poems daily. However, knowing how to generate a summary of the poem is important to preserve the meaning and convey the message in summary form. The following steps illustrate how to write a poem summary.
Step 1Write the Summary of the Poem Using One Sentence
The easiest and clearest way to show the message of the respective poem is through a summarized sentence. First, you need to understand the poem's message and choose the wording that best conveys the meaning.
While the wording and length of the sentence may vary, make sure you stick to the poem's message. Your knowledge and understanding should guide you in the choice of words.
A good example could be: "The speaker is describing his love for his country."
Step 2 Write the Meaning of Each Stanza in Separate Sentences
The poem can resemble a story where each part talks about an experience within the story. Each stanza could discuss a different experience within the general gist of a poem. Therefore, you can try to write each stanza's meaning using separate sentences.
Step 3 Use Keywords
Keywords are pretty useful when it comes to preserving the poem's message. Using it across the different stanza summaries allows you to stick to the main content of the poem. Therefore, the summary won't deviate from the poem's message.
Step 4 Try Metaphor To Summarize Your Poem
Sometimes, summarizing long poem sentences can be a daunting task. You may try to break it down but still use long sentences. Metaphors can help in this situation. They replace long sentences with symbolic words. Find a suitable metaphor to describe a message in a sentence, then use it accordingly. For instance, "The speaker describes his experience of being immersed in love and confusion."
Step 5 Use Imagery
Imagery is one of the most popular and easiest ways to summarize a script or poem. Imagery is a visually descriptive or rather figurative language in literary work used to create an impression or mood. You simply use a few figurative words to create a meaning that would require long sentences.
You could say, "The speaker is entangled in the prison of love."
Step 6 Summarize With a Question
Although it is difficult to summarize a poem with a question, it is possible to pull one or two questions about the message. However, this technique is effective if there are questions within the poem itself.
Example: "What kind of love is being discussed?"
Step 7 Explain the Event/Scenario That Made You Think of the Message
Sometimes events/scenarios can affect how you come up with the summary of the poem. It could be you were sad, happy, confused, visiting someone, flying, or anticipating something great. These scenarios can inform your thinking and, consequently, the summary of the message.
Example: "I was frustrated and lonely" could be a good summary of the poem "When the pot breaks."
Step 8 Summarize With a Quote
A quote gives a summarized meaning of literary work; a poem is no exception. Find a quote that marries the speaker's message.
Example: "Never underestimate knowledge" could be a good quote for the poem "Water the Seeds of Technology."
Step 9 Summarize the Poem
Summarize the entire poem with a series of events in the poem in a list format.
Step 10 Recap Using a Sample Sentence or Paragraph in the Poem
Some certain lines or paragraphs express the poem's meaning more than others. These phrases make the poem more memorable than the whole thing.
Part 3. Tips and Knowledge of Summarizing a Poem
Writing a good poetry summary requires careful attention. This beautiful literary work can lose meaning if you don't pay attention to important tips. If you want to preserve the poem's mood, language, and themes, then pay attention to the following tips for summarizing a poem.
●Understand the type of poems- There are several types of poems, and knowing them is the genesis of writing a better summary. Some of the poem types include sonnets, epics, Haiku, ballads, visual poems, and free verse poems.
● Find the meaning and storyline- Read the poem and imagine yourself as the poet. This way, you easily decode the meaning of the poem.
●Check the rhyme scheme- The rhyme scheme helps you deduce the meaning and the type of poem.
●Find imagery- Find those poet's images painted in the reader's mind. This helps you analyze the poet's feelings and intentions.
●Check themes and symbols- Identify and dissect the various symbols in a poem to find the themes and message.
●Check the language- The choice of words is significant in conveying a message, emotion, or feelings. Therefore, they are significant in the overall message of the poem.
Part 4. Easy Way To Summarize a Poem Effectively Using PDFelement
Summarizing poems traditionally is hectic and time-consuming. Picking the right condensed sentences without losing meaning can be rocket science. Fortunately, the evolution of technology and the eventual use of AI is changing the landscape.
You can now leverage AI tools to create poem summaries with ease and speed, irrespective of the size and complexity of the poem. The AI prowess is amazing and simply gives you an effective summary. However, you ought to find the right AI tool to summarize your poem effectively. Fortunately, Wondershare PDFelement - PDF Editor Wondershare PDFelement Wondershare PDFelement provides AI features on its all-in-one platform.
PDFelement AI robot provides a powerful platform to summarize all types and sizes of documents, including poems. ChatGTP powers this feature and helps you seamlessly analyze and summarize the content. The beauty of Lumi AI Robot feature in PDFelement is the ease of use and convenience. You simply chat with this AI tool and ask it to summarize your poem.
Besides, you can ask this AI platform to explain certain complex sentences or lines in your poem. Again, you can proofread the summary for typos and get the revised response quickly. If you are not satisfied with some results, you can also use it to rewrite those sections to the desired information.
How To Summarize a Poem Using Lumi AI Robot of PDFelement
The following steps illustrate how to summarize a poem with PDFelement's AI feature.
Step 1 Download the target poem and open PDFelement. Upload the poem and click the "AI Tools" button in the "Tools" menu. From the dropdown list, select "Summarize PDF".
Step 2 PDFelement will generate a summary of the poem based on its content, providing three keywords and three content-related questions.
Step 3 Utilize PDFelement's AI to analyze the poem and receive a comprehensive review, which can help you better understand this poem.
Step 4 After completing the poem review, use PDFelement's AI to proofread the review. Select the "Proofread" command and paste the generated review.
Conclusion
Writing a good poem summary goes beyond understanding the message. As you have seen, traditional writing a poem summary is time-consuming and energy-draining. Fortunately, AI is changing the narrative, and you can now generate a poem summary with speed and ease.
However, you ought to choose the appropriate AI platform. Again, you don't have to go far because Wondershare PDFelement has the best AI platform to summarize a poem. Download the latest version of PDFelement and leverage AI to summarize your poem.
