This is called word analysis.
When you are trying to figure out what a particular word means, you are obviously going to analyze it. Maybe you know what its root means, or you can deduce the meaning based on its prefixes and suffixes. You will probably take into consideration the context and neighboring words in the sentence as well in order to analyze it.
Since this is during the period of the Soviet Union and communism, Kennedy is asking the people to come together and defend freedom.
Poetry is a literary form that combines the precise meanings of words with their emotional associations and musical qualities.
There are three main types of poetry:
Lyric - a short poem that expresses the thoughts and feelings of a single reader
Narrative - a poem that tells a story; includes epics and ballads
Dramatic - a poem that presents the speech of one or more speakers in a dramatic situation
*This following stanza is an excerpt from a lyric poem by John Clare.
I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where'er I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good-bye.
His thoughts and feelings stand out by the use of repetition (by repeating "I hid my love")
*The following excerpt is from Edgar Allen Poe's poem, The Raven. In this poem, the narrator experiences a conflict between the desire to forget and the desire to remember.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
The differences between the two poems are that Clare's poem expresses his own thoughts and feelings. No one else speaks in first-person either than him. It is short and very expressive as well.
In contrast, Edgar Allen Poe's poem tells a story. The poem has a theme and characters. This poem is immediately distinguishable from other poems as a narrative because of the first words "once upon."
