Assignment Content
Follow the steps below:
1) Choose one poem from the assigned poems this week.
2) Explicate the poem following the structure below.
3) Submit a one-page single-spaced explication.
Follow the structure below:
Introduction
1) State in one or two sentences what the poem is about.
2) Paraphrase the poem. [When you paraphrase a poem, use your own words to explain the major ideas line-by-line.]
Body
1) What is the mood and tone of the poem? What is the emotion of the poem? How does the speaker feel about what the poem is talking about? To whom is the speaker talking: is the poem self-talk or is the speaker addressing someone else?
2) Determine the poetic devices used in the poem and give examples of the devices you find. (See Poetic Devices Handout)
3) Discuss the words the poet uses. Are they simple and everyday words? words from a particular occupation or walk of life? are they slang words? abstract? philosophical? from religion, or sports, or banking? from the world of nature or love or domestic life, or politics or painting or childhood or computers or psychology or law? Explain why this word is effective, what kind of very particular meaning it communicates, what it suggests.
4) Be alert to repetitions of any kind: a repeated word, a repeated sound, a repeated idea, punctuation, part-of-speech, syntactical arrangement. Since repetition always serves to emphasize, what is being emphasized and why?
5) Figurative language: What metaphors, similes, or images does the poem use? When and why does the speaker use them? Keep in mind that a poet uses figurative language when more literal ways of speaking seem inadequate or inappropriate. (both metaphors and similes are essentially comparisons: say what is being compared to what and why.)
Conclusion
1) Theme is what the author wants the audience to know about a given topic. A poem’s “theme” will be what it communicates more widely, or what it tries to say as a “truth.” Good poems record hard-won and sometimes devastating “truths.”
Poems to choose from-
“Those Winter Sundays” Robert Hayden, p. 365
“I am 25” Gregory Corso, p. 368
“Catch” Robert Francis, p. 372
“Introduction to Poetry” Billy Collins, p. 386
“Hazel Tells LaVerne” Kathryn Howd Machan, p. 403
“Marvell Noir” Ann Lauinger, p. 412
“Out, Out” Robert Frost, p. 415
“The Habits of Love” Kwame Dawes, p. 427 or “Snapping Beans” Lisa Parker, p. 364
The book we are using is=
Literature to Go Fourth Edition
by Michael Meyer (Author), D. Quentin Miller (Author)
