Understanding a poem is about guessing meaning of carefully constructed phrases. The reader gathers clues and evidence in the text to finally see the hidden message. Most of the time it is not apparent, that is the nature of poetry, to be coy, and device some word games.
Poetry is a thought or several related thoughts. The poet may use obscure vocabulary or intricate sentence structure, to hide the literal meaning of the message. By doing that the poet declares something in a unique way, something that could have been said in dozens of boring sentences.
As you read each verse, just take notes on your perceptions. For each verse, make the pertaining comments and describe what you understand. Then as you finish, you can read your notes, and gather the general meaning of the poem, or the main idea. If you are doing a report, you can use the poets metaphors, similes, and imagery next to it explain what they mean. The poem must address a main idea, you can repeat it at the conclusion of your report.
