Heat Tough-o-Meter

(3) Base Camp

This poem's not too tough to understand: it's hot! The speaker wants to cool down! Still, we get it, we really do: sometimes, the poems that are easiest to understand can be tricky to analyze, 'cause it can be difficult to push through that veil of simplicity.

So, if you're struggling a bit to understand the heat behind "Heat," you're in the right place. Check out what we've got to say in our line-by-line summaries. We bet they'll open your eyes to some of the complexities of this ostensibly easy poem.