Guidelines for Poetry Analysis – Frozen Jews By by Abraham Sutzkever
The primary difference between analyzing literary prose and poetry lies in the fact that most poetry does not tell a story, so Character and Plot Analysis is not done.
Poetry is centered primarily on artistic expression. This includes expressing emotions and feelings and provoking thoughts and questoins through the use of well chosen words. A Connotation and Theme Analysis as well as an Artistic Qualities Analysis are the key to poetry analysis.
In addition, many poems can be experienced musically by examining rhythm, rhyme and/or meter. Some poems use words to paint rich and complex visual images. When analyzing poetry, it is important to reflect on whether or not a visual image is being captured through the words used by the poet.
In Holocaust poetry documentation is sometimes an additional goal of the poet.
Please use Sections 2, 3 and 4 of your Literary Analysis Guidelines to analyze the poetry in this course. You will make extensive use of the literary language devices listed in Section 3: Artistic Qualities Analysis. Poems contain significantly more examples of literary language than prose.
Each of the poems you will analyze addresses some or all of the criteria cited above. Your discussion questions will guide you towards preparing a successful in-depth critical analysis of each poem.
The following outline will be useful to you in writing poetry analyses:
Step 1: Explanation of the Historic Background
Research and establish the historic background of both the author and the poem. Two of the authors whose poetry you will read dated every poem they wrote and also sometimes listed the location in which the poem was written for purpose of documentation. Write one paragraph containing the relevant historic background information. If the poet is also documenting something in the poem, state and explain what the poet is documenting and how it is supported by your research.
Step 2: Connotation and Theme Analysis
Your first paragraph should state the denotation of the poem in two or three sentences. The denotation of a poem is a simple description of what the poem is about.
Your second paragraph should analyze and explain the tone of the poem by describing what emotions the author is expressing and what emotions are drawn from the readers who read the poem.
Your third paragraph should analyze and explain the thoughts and questions the author is thinking about, addressing and raising in the poem as well as the thought and questions the author is provoking in readers. A bulleted list of thoughts and questions should be included.
The final section of your Connotation and Theme Analysis explains the theme(s) of the poem based upon the tone and the questions and thoughts being provoked by the author.
Step 3: Artistic Qualities Analysis
In the first section of your Artistic Qualities Analysis, you list all the examples of literary language in the poem by quoting the words used by the author, stating which example(s) of literary language is contained in the words quoted, and explaining how the words are used by the poet to support the theme(s) of the work. This section can be written in the form of a bulleted list.
The second section of your Artistic Qualities Analysis you address whether or not the author uses rhythm, rhyme and/or meter or writes in free verse and you explain the ways in which the poet uses these musical qualities. Cite examples from the poem to support your analysis.
The third section of your artistic analysis is centered on whether or not you feel a reader can experience the poem as a painting, a drawing or a sculpture. There are no hard and fast rules regarding this part of the analysis and different readers will experience a poem in different ways. This part of the analysis involves your own personal creative expression and cannot be critically evaluated by your professor to determine your grade on the analysis except in a positive way. Use your imagination to express what color(s), texture(s), light and shadow, and motion or movement you see in the poem. Describe what you see in a way that allows everyone who reads your analysis to understand the qualities you see in the poem. Cite words from the poem to support your vision.
Guidelines for Poetry Analysis – Frozen Jews By by Abraham Sutzkever
This poem was done by a man who wrote it during the holocaust in 1944 July the 10th. His name is Avrom Sutzkever.
Have you seen, in fields of snow, frozen Jews, row on row? Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying.
Somewhere a flicker of a frozen soul – glint of fish in an icy swell. All brood. Speech and silence are one. Night snow encases the sun.
A smile glows immobile from a rose lip’s chill. Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple’s dried.
Fist, fixed in ice, of a naked old man: the power’s undone in his hand. I’ve sampled death in all guises. Nothing surprises.
Yet a frost in July in this heat – a crazy assault in the street. I and blue carrion, face to face. Frozen Jews in a snowy space.
Marble shrouds my skin. Words ebb. Light grows thin. I’m frozen, I’m rooted in place like the naked old man enfeebled by ice.
Biography about Avrom Sutzkever:
Avrom Sutzkever was born in 1913 in the country that is now called Belarus. He was a Yiddish poet who when he wrote his poems they were always about his life. He lived Siberia most of his life and in his poems usually talked about the ghetto he lived in, in Vilna during World War 2. His works also describe his escape to join the Jewish partisans. In 1915 Sutzkever ran away from then country with his family to Eastern Europe and within that Siberia. They returned to their home in 1920 where he later in life studied literature criticism at the University of Vilna. In 1927 he started to write poems and associated himself with group known as the Yung Vilne (Young Vilna). He died in 2010 on January the 20th.
What is the poem talking about?
This poem is talking about how Jewish people were treated and regarded during the Holocaust. The poem is talking about how when Jewish people were murdered by the Nazi’s and the Nazi’s couldn’t be bothered to pick the bodies up so they left them in the snow. In this poem it gives a very deep description of all the types of people who were murdered; from mothers with children to old men. But all are frozen in the snow. At the end of the poem it is talking about how the poet is so shocked that he is frozen in his place.
What are the poetic techniques are used?
There are a range of poetic techniques used in this poem they are: Metaphors, visual imagery and rhyme. A metaphor is a technique used in this poem, an example of a metaphor is “Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying”. This metaphor is talking about how the Jewish people were left out in the snow to die because the Nazi’s kicked them out of their houses. “not breathing, not dying” implies a very slow death. The effect of this is we realise how cruel the Nazi’s were and we may get angry towards the people who did the cruelty or feel sad for the people who had to suffer it.
There is also visual imagery used in the poem. An example of this is “Odd that her nipple’s dried”. In this sentence they are saying that a women has been kicked out of her home in the snow with her child. The mother was trying to breastfeed the child but unfortunately the weather was so cold that she couldn’t produce any milk because her nipple had frozen. This is a very powerful image since a baby is the symbol of new life and the fact that it will not live because it does not get the nutrients from breastmilk, makes the audience feel the suffering of that time. In this sentence there is also a strong mood of death caused by the imagery. There is a also rhyme shown in the poem an example of this is “Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple’s dried’. This sentence is talking about how a mother and her baby have been kicked out of their home by the Nazi’s, in the freezing cold. The mother cannot feed the baby because the snow is so cold her breastmilk has frozen up. This is a very powerful image conveyed to the audience because the rhyme makes it sound jovial and upbeat when ironically it is talking about death. This creates a very eerie atmosphere to the readers because of the irony used in this sentence.
Have you seen, in fields of snow, frozen Jews, row on row? Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying.
Somewhere a flicker of a frozen soul – glint of fish in an icy swell. All brood. Speech and silence are one. Night snow encases the sun.
A smile glows immobile from a rose lip’s chill. Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple’s dried.
Fist, fixed in ice, of a naked old man: the power’s undone in his hand. I’ve sampled death in all guises. Nothing surprises.
Yet a frost in July in this heat – a crazy assault in the street. I and blue carrion, face to face. Frozen Jews in a snowy space.
Marble shrouds my skin. Words ebb. Light grows thin. I’m frozen, I’m rooted in place like the naked old man enfeebled by ice.
Guidelines for Poetry Analysis – Frozen Jews By by Abraham Sutzkever
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