The goal of Lesson 4 is that you will become confident in reading and analyzing poetry as a form of discourse, and that you will be able to analyze the range of biblical poems that are written using this poetic idiom. That is the subject of chapters 4 and 5 of How to Read the Bible as Literature. Read pages 87-120 in this book. This is a good place to reiterate that mastering How to Read the Bible as Literature is the primary ingredient in this course
Optional Learning by Doing Exercise
A good text with which to apply what you have learned in this lesson about the elements of poetry and poems that employ those elements is Psalm 91. Analyze the elements of poetry in this poem, and also the way in which the poem is unified and structured as a complete composition.