P / Workshop · Premium · 13 November 2026

The Workshop · Tool

A poem is several poems on top of each other.

Switch each layer on and off to see it alone: the sound, the sentences, the lines. Then paste your own draft and set it beside Keats or Hardy.

  • Poetry
  • Close reading
  • About 10 minutes
  • Free tool
Start below ↓
soundI caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,in his riding of the rolling level underneath himsteady air, and striding high there, how he rungsyntaxI caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,in his riding of the rolling level underneath himsteady air, and striding high there, how he runglineI caught this morning morning’s minion, king-dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon,in his riding of the rolling level underneath himsteady air, and striding high there, how he rungOne poem,several poemslaid on top ofeach other. The Layered Reader Sound, syntax, line and the critics, one layer at a time Poetic.ly

Free to use

  • Eight poems: Shakespeare, Keats, Dickinson, Hopkins, Hardy, Yeats, Williams, Owen
  • Sound, syntax, line and gloss layers, mapped automatically on any text you paste
  • Measure it against a master: your counts beside any of the eight, with what each gap suggests

For members · Fellowship and above

  • The critics' layer: 24 published readings from JSTOR, each pinned to the line it turns on
  • Vendler on Shakespeare, Ramazani on Hardy, Outka on Yeats and the 1918 pandemic, Rizzo on whose wheelbarrow it was
  • A question from each critic to put to your own draft

A poem is several poems laid on top of each other: one made of sound, one of grammar, one of lines. Switch each layer on and off to see it alone. Start with one of eight poems, from Shakespeare to Owen, or paste your own draft and let the reader map its sound, sentences and lines.

Workshop · The Layered Reader

Choose a text

The layers

Measure it against a master

Set the text on screen beside any of the eight poems. The same counts, side by side, with what the gap might mean.

Members · The critics' layer

What the critics saw

What the layers show

Sound, syntax and line are mapped automatically: alliteration by matching opening consonant sounds within a line, rhyme by matching word endings, sentences by punctuation, and syllables by vowel groups. The counts are approximate and work on any text you paste. The glosses are Poetic.ly's.

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