How about this one? Let's look at word choice and figurative language

1. We always ask first - Who is the speaker?
2. Look for words with multiple meanings - denotative, connotative, and how about figurative?
3. Paraphrase the poem.
4. Look for similes, metaphors, personification.
5. Look for imagery.
After looking at these elements, what does this poem tell you? What is its message?

Auto Wreck

by Karl Shapiro

Its quick soft silver bell beating, beating,
And down the dark one ruby flare
Pulsing out red light like an artery,
The ambulance at top speed floating down
Past beacons and illuminated clocks
Wings in a heavy curve, dips down,
And brakes speed, entering the crowd.
The doors leap open, emptying light;
Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted
And stowed into the little hospital.
Then the bell, breaking the hush, tolls once.
And the ambulance with its terrible cargo
Rocking, slightly rocking, moves away,
As the doors, an afterthought, are closed.

We are deranged, walking among the cops
Who sweep glass and are large and composed.
One is still making notes under the light.
One with a bucket douches ponds of blood
Into the street and gutter.
One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling,
Empty husks of locusts, to iron poles.
Our throats were tight as tourniquets,
Our feet were bound with splints, but now,
Like convalescents intimate and gauche,
We speak through sickly smiles and warn
With the stubborn saw of common sense,
The grim joke and the banal resolution.
The traffic moves around with care,
But we remain, touching a wound
That opens to our richest horror.
Already old, the question Who shall die?
Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?

For death in war is done by hands;
Suicide has cause and stillbirth, logic;
And cancer, simple as a flower, blooms.
But this invites the occult mind,
Cancels our physics with a sneer,
And spatters all we knew of denouement
Across the expedient and wicked stones.

Denotation/Connotation = Tone and Mood

Below is a poem with very interesting word choices. The title of the poem is "Dog's Death."Be fore you read this poem, I want you  ask yourself - What are the title's denotations and connotations? What would be the difference between the tone of the title if Updike had titled it "Good Dog," instead?

Now, Read the poem several times. Define words you don't know the meaning of, check for double meanings. Circle words that are similar to the tone of the title. Which words have the same feel? How does the poem make you feel? Is it similar to the tone caused by the words? Comment on your thoughts in the comments here. (I also suggest you paraphrase the poem)

Dog's Death
by John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, 'Good dog! Good dog!'

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog. 

Here is a link to hear it read to you:

Dog's Death