Briefly summarize the four steps for limiting the topic of a short essay.

First, consider the subject of the essay. Then, think of a plan and set word limit. After that, you need to develop your argument or thesis statement. Then, you should write an outline of your essay to guide you with your writing process. 

try to do soaps tone.

s-subject

o-occasion (the reason the author wrote the poem)

a-audience (who is this poem mostly for)

p-purpose (was it to convince, inspire, etc. the audience)

s-speaker (can be the author or another character, like is a child, adult, woman, elderly, animal narrating the poem)

tone- the mood the reader gets from this poem

mood- the mood the author had with their own poem

meaning- what do you think the meaning is?

message- what is the author trying to explain to the audience? like what is the theme?

if you still don't get it try showing everyone the poem so they could unravel it