HOW TO EXPLICATE A POEM

(Thanks to Betsy Draine of the University of Wisconsin-Madison)

A good poem is like a puzzle--the most fascinating part is studying the individual pieces carefully and then

putting them back together to see how beautifully the whole thing fits together. A poem can have a

number of different "pieces" that you need to look at closely in order to complete the poetic "puzzle."

This sheet explains one way to attempt an explication of a poem, by examining each "piece" of the poem

separately. (An "explication" is simply an explanation of how all the elements in a poem work together to

achieve the total meaning and effect.)

Examine the situation in the poem:

Does the poem tell a story? Is it a narrative poem? If so, what events occur?

Does the poem express an emotion or describe a mood?

Poetic voice: Who is the speaker? Is the poet speaking to the reader directly or is the poem told

through a fictional "persona"? To whom is he speaking? Can you trust the speaker?

Tone: What is the speaker's attitude toward the subject of the poem? What sort of tone of voice

seems to be appropriate for reading the poem out loud? What words, images, or ideas give you a

clue to the tone?

Examine the structure of the poem:

Form: Look at the number of lines, their length, their arrangement on the page. How does the form

relate to the content? Is it a traditional form (e.g. sonnet, limerick) or "free form"? Why do you

think the poem chose that form for his poem?

Movement: How does the poem develop? Are the images and ideas developed chronologically, by

cause and effect, by free association? Does the poem circle back to where it started, or is the

movement from one attitude to a different attitude (e.g. from despair to hope)?

Syntax: How many sentences are in the poem? Are the sentences simple or complicated? Are the

verbs in front of the nouns instead of in the usual "noun, verb" order? Why?

Punctuation: What kind of punctuation is in the poem? Does the punctuation always coincide with the

end of a poetic line? If so, this is called an end-stopped line. If there is no punctuation at the end

of a line and the thought continues into the next line, this is called enjambement. Is there any

punctuation in the middle of a line? Why do you think the poet would want you to pause halfway

through the line?

Title: What does the title mean? How does it relate to the poem itself?

Examine the language of the poem:

Diction or Word Choice: Is the language colloquial, formal, simple, unusual?

Do you know what all the words mean? If not, look them up.

What moods or attitudes are associated with words that stand out for you?

Allusions: Are there any allusions (references) to something outside the poem, such as events or

people from history, mythology, or religion?

Imagery: Look at the figurative language of the poem--metaphors, similes, analogies, personification.

How do these images add to the meaning of the poem or intensify the effect of the poem?

Examine the musical devices in the poem:

Rhyme scheme: Does the rhyme occur in a regular pattern, or irregularly? Is the effect formal,

satisfying, musical, funny, disconcerting?

Rhythm or meter: In most languages, there is a pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a word

or words in a sentence. In poetry, the variation of stressed and unstressed syllables and words has

a rhythmic effect. What is the tonal effect of the rhythm here?

Other "sound effects": alliteration, assonance, consonance repetition. What tonal effect do they have

here?

Has the poem created a change in mood for you--or a change in attitude? How have the technical

elements helped the poet create this effect?

From http://wwwpp.uwrf.edu/~sl01/explcat.html

The Man He Killed BY THOMAS HARDY

"Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because —

Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

Off-hand like — just as I —

Was out of work — had sold his traps —

No other reason why.

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat if met where any bar is,

Or help to half-a-crown."

A Study Of Reading Habits

by Philip Larkin

When getting my nose in a book

Cured most things short of school,

It was worth ruining my eyes

To know I could still keep cool,

And deal out the old right hook

To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,

Evil was just my lark:

Me and my cloak and fangs

Had ripping times in the dark.

The women I clubbed with sex!

I broke them up like meringues.

Don't read much now: the dude

Who lets the girl down before

The hero arrives, the chap

Who's yellow and keeps the store

Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:

Books are a load of crap.

There is no frigate like a book

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

Emily Dickinson

When my love swears that she is made of truth BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.

But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love loves not to have years told.

Therefore I lie with her and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

For a Lamb

-Richard Eberhart

I saw on the slant hill a putrid lamb,

Propped with daisies. The sleep looked deep,

The face nudged in the green pillow

But the guts were out for crows to eat.

Where's the lamb? whose tender plaint

Said all for the mute breezes.

Say he's in the wind somewhere,

Say, there's a lamb in the daisies.

Apparently with no surprise,

Apparently with no surprise,

To any happy flower,

The frost beheads it at its play,

In accidental power.

The blond assassin passes on.

The sun proceeds unmoved,

To measure off another day,

For an approving God.

Emily Dickinson

Since There's No Help

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,

From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

Michael Drayton (1563 - 1631 / Warwickshire / England)

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130)

by William Shakespeare My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

The Flea BY JOHN DONNE

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that, self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Bright Star

Poem by John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--

No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

John Keats

It sifts from Leaden Sieves - (291) BY EMILY DICKINSON

It sifts from Leaden Sieves -

It powders all the Wood.

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road -

It makes an even Face

Of Mountain, and of Plain -

Unbroken Forehead from the East

Unto the East again -

It reaches to the Fence -

It wraps it Rail by Rail

Till it is lost in Fleeces -

It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack - and Stem -

A Summer’s empty Room -

Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,

Recordless, but for them -

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts

As Ankles of a Queen -

Then stills it’s Artisans - like Ghosts -

Denying they have been -

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

by John Donne As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, "The breath goes now," and some say, "No," So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of the earth brings harms and fears, Men reckon what it did and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit Absence, because it doth remove Those things which elemented it. But we, by a love so much refined That our selves know not what it is, Inter-assured of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion. Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do; And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like the other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

To His Coy Mistress

by Andrew Marvell Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day. Thou by the Indian Ganges' side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the Flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews. My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow; An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze; Two hundred to adore each breast; But thirty thousand to the rest; An age at least to every part, And the last age should show your heart; For, Lady, you deserve this state, Nor would I love at lower rate. But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave's a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace. Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power. Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear,

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Redemption

BY GEORGE HERBERT

Having been tenant long to a rich lord,

Not thriving, I resolvèd to be bold,

And make a suit unto him, to afford

A new small-rented lease, and cancel th’ old.

In heaven at his manor I him sought;

They told me there that he was lately gone

About some land, which he had dearly bought

Long since on earth, to take possessiòn.

I straight returned, and knowing his great birth,

Sought him accordingly in great resorts;

In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts;

At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth

Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied,

Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.

Much Madness is divinest Sense - (620) BY EMILY DICKINSON

Much Madness is divinest Sense -

To a discerning Eye -

Much Sense - the starkest Madness -

’Tis the Majority

In this, as all, prevail -

Assent - and you are sane -

Demur - you’re straightway dangerous -

And handled with a Chain -

Incident

BY COUNTEE CULLEN 1903–1946

Once riding in old Baltimore,

Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,

I saw a Baltimorean

Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore

From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

That’s all that I remember.

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth --

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth --

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?--

If design govern in a thing so small.

Robert Frost

TO THE MERCY KILLERS

-Dudley Randall-

If ever mercy move you murder me,

I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.

Never conspire with death to set me free,

but let me know such life as pain can give.

Even though I be a clot, an aching clench,

a stub, a stump, a butt, a scap, a knob,

a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,

still let me live, so long as life shall throb.

Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf

of glucose, bottled blood, machinery

to swell the lung and pump the heart—even so,

do not put out my life. Let me still glow.

-Dudley Randall-

That night when joy began

W. H. Auden

That night when joy began

Our narrowest veins to flush,

We waited for the flash

Of morning’s leveled gun.

But morning let us pass,

And day by day relief

Outgrows his nervous laugh,

Grown credulous of peace,

As mile by mile is seen

No trespasser’s reproach,

And love’s best glasses reach

No fields but are his own.

God’s Grandeur

Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

We Real Cool

Gwendolyn Brooks

The Pool Players.

Seven At The Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk Late. We

Strike Straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

Because I could not stop for Death

Emily Dickenson

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove; he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove,

At recess, in the ring,

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun,

Or rather, he passed us;

The dews drew quivering and chill;

For only gossamer, my gown;

My tippet, only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible.

The cornice, in the ground.

Since then, ‘tis centuries, and yet

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses’ heads

Were toward eternity.

Eight O'Clock

He stood, and heard the steeple

Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town.

One, two, three, four, to market-place and people

It tossed them down.

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour,

He stood and counted them and cursed his luck;

And then the clock collected in the tower

Its strength, and struck.

Alfred Edward Housman

Anthem for Doomed Youth BY WILFRED OWEN

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Heaven-Haven

I have desired to go

Where springs not fail,

To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,

And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be

Where no storms come,

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

And out of the swing of the sea.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.