Poetry can sometimes feel daunting when you have to try to "read between the lines" or try to find a deeper interpretation.  Here are some strategies to help when reading a poem.

1. Chunk the poem.  Splitting the poem into manageable sections can make it significantly easier to read than trying to read a full poem as one text.  I typically recommend chunks of 2-4 lines.  Sometimes the poem will have stanzas that fit within this, sometimes you have to do the chunking.

2. Start with a summary before analysis.  While reading and chunking, make sense of what the poem is merely saying.  After summarizing your chunks, you can try to make sense of the poem or look for a different meaning.

3. Be conscious of the poem's word choice.  Word choice can be the piece that tends to distract students, especially if a poet is trying to use a word with a different meaning than its common use.  This means that after your summary and upon analysis, consider connotation vs. denotation (contextual or understood meaning vs. dictionary/known meaning).

4. When looking at the questions and answer choices, make sure you are conscious of what the question is actually asking.  I wouldn't say that the test creators are looking to purposely trick students, but they do tend to have keyword in questions that students can skip over (such as asking about a central theme or something's primary purpose).

5. When you look at the answer choices, the correct answer should fully answer the question.  Often the distractors are only "sort of" or partially correct, so you need to consider which answer choice correctly and fully answers the question.