Organisation, and What Sophistication Really Is

Organise by argument, not by line number

The default essay walks the poem: first stanza, then second, then third. It feels safe because the poem supplies the order. It is also the surest way to write a summary with quotations in it, because a paragraph that begins "In the second stanza the speaker says..." has already committed itself to reporting rather than arguing.

Organise instead by the steps of your claim. One paragraph per step; evidence drawn from wherever in the poem that step needs it, including from two stanzas at once. The test: swap two of your body paragraphs. If nothing breaks, your paragraphs were not steps in an argument.

What sophistication is not

It is not long sentences, not a wider vocabulary, not a closing paragraph about the human condition, and not more devices named. Readers are explicitly told not to reward those.

What sophistication is

Most often, one of three things. Tension: the essay holds two opposed readings together instead of choosing the comfortable one. Self-contradiction: the essay notices where the poem argues against itself, and treats that as the point rather than an inconsistency to be tidied. Context earned from the text: the essay places the poem in a broader idea, and the idea is visibly grown from the words on the page rather than imported.

Sophistication is almost always a consequence of good commentary rather than a separate paragraph bolted on at the end.