NOTES

Steps for an analysis:

• Title
  
• Layout
• Denotation
• Structure
• Connotation (phonological level, semantical level, syntactical level, rhetorical level)

• What do you expect from the title? I expect the poem to be about someone’s death.
• Why do you expect that? There is the word funeral in the title. Blues is a kind of music.
• What about layout? The poem is arranged into 4 stanzas.
• How many lines has each stanza (quatrain)?
• What does the first one explain? The first quatrain tells about silence.
• Who’s speaking in the poem? There is a speaking voice. The speaking voice tells the reader to stop the clocks, to cut off the telephone, to prevent the dog from barking.
• Why does he tell all that? Why does he want silence? (nobody must interfere with any noise). Because silence is connected with death. The speaking voice invites the reader not to make confusion because someone has died.
• What kind of sound device does the poet use? In the first line there is the repetition of sound “o”.
• What does the frequent repetition creates? It creates an atmosphere.
• Why is the poet using the imperative mode?

The title of the poem is “Funeral Blues”. It was written by W.H. Auden in 1976. It belongs to a collection of poems called “Tell me the truth about love”.

From the title the reader expects the poem to be about somebody’s death or his/her funeral. Blues is a sad kind of music. As for layout the poem is made up of four stanzas of four lines each, that is four quatrains. While the first two stanzas focus on some aspects that are generally present in a funeral, the last lines refer to the relationship with the dead person.