Write an essay of about four full pages explicating the poem Seamus Heaney “Mid-term Break” (1966) with a set pattern and meter. Though your paper can’t cover everything, it should demonstrate that you know the basic elements to include in an explication, that you understand the poetic terms, and that you can apply them and analyze their effects. This essay differs from the first one in that you must include some consideration of the poem’s form, rhyme scheme, meter, and rhythm. You will write about a closed form, such as a sonnet or a ballad, with a set meter and rhyme scheme.
I have scanned around half the poem its requiered to finish the poem as your going to be using the scanned poem to write about the meter, form, and poetic elements.
Organization. In the first part of your essay (this may take several paragraphs), give the poet’s name, the title of the poem, and the year it was published. Comment briefly on the poem’s theme, speaker, dramatic situation, tone, and basic structure, organization, and meter.
Then, in the main body of the essay, move through the poem, identifying poetic devices and their effects. In terms of paragraphing, you could devote a paragraph to each stanza or section of a poem. As you explicate, note the way the elements of sound and figurative language and rhythm and so on work together to create meaning.
In your conclusion, discuss the major idea you believe the poet is striving to communicate.
Content. As you explicate, your essay should touch on the following poetic elements:
speaker
topic/situation
form and rhyme scheme
meter
tone
word choice
figurative language
rhetorical figures
irony
symbols
themes
anything else you find relevant to the poem
Within the text of your essay, you MUST comment on the poem’s form and meter. Within the body of your essay, you MUST include consideration of at least three specific times in the poem where the stressed and unstressed syllables contribute to the meaning. And you MUST attach a clean scanned copy of the poem, with feet and stressed and unstressed syllables marked, along with your essay.
In the text of your paper, you do not need to explain the scanning of each line in detail, but you should note places where the meter or accented syllables add to the effect of the poem and to its meaning. When there is a variation from, say, the poem’s iambic pattern, what effect does it produce?
For example, in the first line of Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,” what effect is produced by the spondaic fourth foot? Quote the line as you discuss it, indicate each foot with a slash, and mark the stressed and unstressed syllables so the reader is guided, as in
A sud / den blow, / the great / wings beat / ing still
iamb iamb iamb spondee iamb
That way, when you discuss the effect the meter creates, the reader will be able to understand your point. In this case, the three stressed syllables in a row mimic the beating of wings and slow down the line.
(Normally, one marks the accented syllables with an accent mark above the stressed syllable and a u above the unstressed syllable. I do not know how to use those marks on a computer, though some of you may. That’s why I have bolded the stressed syllables and labeled the foot. You may follow whatever form you want as long as you make clear where the stressed and unstressed syllables are and where the poem is divided into feet. See the handout on Meter.)
Similarly, if you identify a poem as an English sonnet at the start of your essay, say something about the way the poem is structured as you explicate. Does each quatrain present a different idea? Or, if it is an Italian sonnet, do the octave and sestet represent different parts of the poem’s message? Does the rhyme scheme place stress on certain pairs of words? Why? And so on.
Concentrate on those elements that most contribute to the poem’s overall meaning and effect. Where does a metaphor or an oxymoron or an anapestic foot or a paradox attract a reader’s attention? What is the poet emphasizing? Remember, too, that establishing the literal meaning of a poem sometimes requires you to interpret two (or more) lines together. A line by itself may not tell you everything.
Please DO NOT use outside sources other than the information in the textbook and in The Oxford English Dictionary or other dictionaries or reference books about language (such as Eric Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy) found in the library’s reference databases. Please consult no other works. Recall the warnings about plagiarism on the syllabus. I do not care what Scholars X or Y say about a poem or line or word; I care about what you say. However, if you do consult any sources, even if you are not quoting them, you must cite them to avoid plagiarism.
There is no single correct explication. Use the OED to be sure that the meaning you attribute to a word was in fact current when the poem was written. Ground your interpretation in what the poem literally says. See me if you have questions.
