(a) cover ALL the relevant poetic devices (including the form of the poem and, if applicable, how ?that form contributes to ho

The DOs & DON’Ts of Explicating a Poem

What Follows Is a Series of Things You MUST Do

& NOT Do

Before You Submit Your Final Draft to Canvas Make Sure That You Have DONE All the DOs and NONE of the DON’Ts

The DOs & DON’Ts of Writing about Poetry 1. Remember that your task is to explicate the poem, so make sure that you explicate the poem in the order that it is written.

a. Make sure you address the form of the poem (continuous, stanzaic, fixed (English sonnet, Italian sonnet, villanelle) b. Make sure you address the rhyme scheme (specific rhyme pattern, free verse, quatrains, tercets, couplets, quintets, octaves, sestets). c. Make sure you address the presence and use of metaphors, similes, symbols, personification, allusion, apostrophe, hyperbole, paradox d. Make sure you address the presence and use of consonance, sibilance, alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme, anaphora

i. Do not write about your thoughts or feelings or whether you liked or disliked the poem Instead, write about how the poem works and what it implies And based on that, what we might infer from its language & how it works

ii. Do not write about what you think the poem means … Instead, write about how the poem works and what it implies And based on that, what we might infer from its language & how it works

iii. Do not write– the poet means to do this … what the poet wants / tells his readers to believe … the poet makes his readers Instead, write about what the poet does. What the language reveals / implies …

iv. Do not tell us what the poem does or means … Instead, show us by explicating the text what the poem implies and what one can infer from those implications.

v. Do not tell us the poet says things that she or he does not actually say. Instead, write about what the poet does say and how the poet says it.

vi. Do not use slang, colloquialisms, clichés, or platitudes. Instead, use clear, formal and exact language. NO: Shakespeare’s language is hella wack, but they talked that way back in the day. We just got to remember love is stronger than hate. YES: Shakespeare’s use of language might be confusing to some readers due to its highly poetic nature.

vii. Do not use psychobabble (using psychology to explain conditions without really knowing the actual psychology) NO: The speaker in “The Snow Man” clearly suffers from narcissism because he only sees his own misery in the winter landscape. First, nothing in the text supports or suggests that. Second, the writer clearly does not understand what narcissism is.

GO BACK TO YOUR ESSAY AND CHECK AND FIX ANY MISTAK ES BEFORE YOU UP LOAD IT TO CANVAS!

The DOs & DON’Ts of Explicating a Poem 3. Because this explication is an inductive essay, do not begin with a formal introduction.

a. Begin by explicating the poem. b. Place your thesis in your conclusion.

4. Make sure you introduce us to the author and the title of the poem in the first paragraph of your essay.

Example: Robert Frost begins his poem “The Road Not Taken” by explaining that two “roads diverged in a yellow wood” (1).

a. Make sure you correctly spell the poet’s name and correctly write and spell the title of the poem. b. Make sure you use the poet’s full name the first time you refer to her or him and then only use her or his last name for the rest of your essay. b. Only refer to the title of the poem in your first sentence. Do not mention the title again in your essay. c. Enclose the title of the poem in quotation marks: “One Art” “Blackberry-Picking" “The Road Not Taken”

5. You can refer to the author as the poet or the speaker.

Example: The poet, standing at the fork in the road, wishes he could be one traveler.

GO BACK TO YOUR ESSAY AND CHECK AND FIX ANY MISTAK ES BEFORE YOU UP LOAD IT TO CANVAS!

The DOs & DON’Ts of Writing about Poetry

GO BACK TO YOUR ESSAY AND CHECK AND FIX ANY MISTAK ES BEFORE YOU UP LOAD IT TO CANVAS!

Example One Jack Frost tells us that “nature’s first green is gold” (1) because he wants to make us realize that nature is like piles of gold. Because we all desire gold, the poet is attacking our human greed and our desire to rob nature of her valuable resources. Frost clearly knows that climate change is destroying the world, so he wants to tell us that we need to stop treating the world as an unending source of valuable commodities that we can take for ourselves. Instead, we must return to the first green of nature which is to love and respect nature as our earth mother before it is too late. Jack tells us that this greed is “Her hardest hue to hold” (2). Frost wants to show us how to be happy in nature, among her gold, but we see that nature cannot hold that gold because of our greed. We of course do not listen to Jack, and, as result, the gold of our world is being pillaged by our greed.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————— Example Two Robert Frost begins his eight-line continuous poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” with the assertion that “nature’s first green is gold” (1), a metaphor that asks a reader to ponder the value of this first green, a green that presumably places one in the first days of spring that have followed the cold days of winter. The metaphor compares that initial green to gold. The alliteration of these two words implies a connection between them even though they are quite different. Gold is both a color and a metal, one that is precious, valuable, desirable, and beautiful, all qualities which suggest that this first green is something wonderful, something important, something humans covet. Frost, who employs a rhyme scheme of aabbccddee in his poem, follows this line with the alliterative “Her hardest hue to hold” (1), “gold” and “hold” completing the rhyme of the first two lines.

Example One This is not an example of an explication. Do not do this! (1) The writer does not address the form OR any of the figurative or musical devices (2) The writer does not explicate the language; instead, the writer tells the reader this is what is happening in the poem (without providing any analysis of the actual text. We are expected to accept what the writer says merely because the writer says it). A poet does not make a reader do anything, nor do we know what the poet wants. (3) The writer’s claims have very little to do with anything the poem actually says (just about nothing). (4) The writer is making the text fit what the writer says the text means. Your job is to show what the text, itself, reveals. (5) The poet’s name is not Jack Frost (it’s Robert Frost). After you use the author’s correct full name in the first sentence of your essays, use the poet’s last name for the rest of the essay. The writer does not provide the title of the poem in the first sentence of the essay. (6) This writer is writing in Othertown without ever having been in Actualville.

Example Two This is an explication. DO this! (1) The writer specifically addresses and explains the use of metaphor and alliteration. The writer explains what is being compared in the metaphor and what that metaphor (based in the language of the metaphor) implies. The writer specifically addresses the alliteration in the first line. The writer addresses the alliteration in the 2nd line (and will explain it in the sentence). (2) The writer explicates the text, grounding the analysis in what the poet says. The writer explicates the how and what of the text. The writer shows the reader; the writer does not just tell the reader. (3) The writer’s claims have everything to do with the text. (4) The writer introduces us to the title + the full name of the poet (and then uses last name) (5) This writer is using the text in Actualville before offering anything in Othertown,

The DOs & DON’Ts of Writing about Poetry

GO BACK TO YOUR ESSAY AND CHECK AND FIX ANY MISTAK ES BEFORE YOU UP LOAD IT TO CANVAS!

2. Do not use “I” or “you” in your essay. a. Do not write personal observations about your own life; do not refer to your life at all or discuss what you feel about the poem.

While there is certainly great value in considering the ways that poetry helps us understand our personal experiences, including our personal thoughts about a poem, there is no room for those kinds of observations in this kind of writing in an academic assignment.

b. Do not tell us what you think … instead, write what you think without referring to yourself. c. Do not address your reader by using “you.” We are there reading your essay, but do not refer to us, just assume we are there (because we are!).

You may, however, use the universal we, the personal pronoun our, and the pronoun one.

Note: to be clear, using “I” or “you” is not expressly wrong. I am, for the reasons above, prohibiting you from using them and pushing you towards realizing that any time you use them, you can easily rewrite the sentence without using them.

Paragraph in Which the Writer Uses “I” and “You” and also Offers a Personal View I think when Wallace Stevens writes about the listener, “who is nothing himself” (14), beholding nothing “that is not there and the nothing that is” (15), he refers to the snow man of the title. If you think about it, a snow man is not conscious, not aware of its own existence. You and I see the winter landscape, and we experience the numbing cold and, thus, we feel miserable. The snow man, on the other hand, does not feel. He merely gazes with no thought or feeling. I can relate to this because I feel I often bring my own preconceived notions, feelings and reactions to the world I experience.

Same Paragraph but Edited so that It No Longer Includes “I” and “You” and the Personal View I think when When Wallace Stevens writes about the listener, “who is nothing himself” (14), beholding nothing “that is not there and the nothing that is” (15), he refers to the snow man of the title. If you think about it After all, a snow man is not conscious, not aware of its own existence. You and I We see the winter landscape, and we experience the numbing cold and, thus, we feel miserable. The snow man, on the other hand, does not feel. He merely gazes with no thought or feeling. I can relate to this because I feel I Indeed, we often bring my own our preconceived notions, feelings and reactions to the world I we experience.

The DOs & DON’Ts of Writing about Poetry

GO BACK TO YOUR ESSAY AND CHECK AND FIX ANY MISTAK ES BEFORE YOU UP LOAD IT TO CANVAS!

5. Make sure you use the present tense when discussing the poem:

Incorrect: The traveler felt the woods “were lovely, dark and deep” (16). Correct: The traveler feels the woods “were lovely, dark and deep” (16).

6. When explicating poetic terms, do not provide a definition of the poetic device (assume your audience knows how the poetic device works).

Incorrect: When Donne writes “death thou shalt die” (14), he uses a paradox, a statement or situation that contains apparent contradictory elements which also reveals something truthful. Certainly death cannot die? However, the paradox can be resolved by faith in salvation— through which one’s soul lives on for an eternity after the body dies. And, thus, when one wakes eternally, death ceases to be.

Instead, Write the Following: The culmination of the poem, “Death thou shalt die” (14), leaves the reader with a paradox. Death, after all, cannot die. So how can we understand such a claim? The answer to the contradiction can be found in salvation— through which one’s soul lives on for an eternity after the body dies. And, thus, when one wakes eternally, death ceases to be.

7. Explicate the poem using the following terms: lines, stanzas (or more specifically–> couplets, tercets, quatrains, quintets, sestets, octaves)

Do Not Use the Following: sentences, paragraphs, pages

8. Do not repeatedly tell your reader where you are in the poem (in line one, in line two, in line three, in line four, in line five, etc.). As you explicate the poem in the order of how it unfolds, from beginning to end, you will be moving from one line (or chunk) to the next.

9. Do not write–> in the poem … in the poem … in the poem … in the poem After all, where else would you be while you are writing an explication of a poem?

The DOs & DON’Ts of Writing about Poetry

GO BACK TO YOUR ESSAY AND CHECK AND FIX ANY MISTAK ES BEFORE YOU UP LOAD IT TO CANVAS!

10. Make sure you correctly cite the line(s) of the poem. a. Use the line number(s) to cite the line(s) b. When quoting 2-3 lines of a poem use a / to indicate the break in the lines c. If you quote 4 or more lines, you must block the quotation. d. place the citation at the end of the quotation (see examples below) e. place the punctuation for the sentence outside the parentheses f. Do not refer to the lines you are quoting as a quotation or quote.

NO: This quotation suggests … YES: These lines suggest YES: Use a subject that reflects the line and/or why you quoted it

Line 1 –> Nature’s first green is gold, Line 2 –> Her hardest hue to hold. Line 3 –> Her early leaf’s a flower; Line 4 –> But only so an hour. Line 5 –> Then leaf subsides to leaf. Line 6 –> So Eden sank to grief, Line 7 –> So dawn goes down to day. Line 8 –> Nothing gold can stay.

Example of a Sentence Quoting One Line from the Poem Frost builds from the first metaphor by adding a second one: “Her early leaf’s a flower” (3). <– note: the sentence ends with the citation followed by the punctuation

omit the semi colon from the 3rd line

Example of a Sentence Quoting Two Consecutive Lines from the Poem Frost builds from the first metaphor by adding a second one: “Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only so an hour” (3-4).

keep this semi colon from the 3rd line and omit the period from the 4th line

Example of a Sentence Quoting Two Different Lines from the Poem Frost builds from the first metaphor, “Nature’s first green is gold” (1), by adding a second one: “Her early leaf’s a flower” (3).

if the quotation appears in the middle of the sentence cite it // omit the comma from the 1st line and the period from the 2nd line

Example of a Sentence Quoting One Line from the Poem Frost builds from the first metaphor by adding: “Her early leaf’s a flower” (3). This quotation is a metaphor that compares the first leaf of spring to a flower.

omit the semi colon from the 3rd line do not refer to the line you have quoted as a quotation

Frost builds from the first metaphor by adding: “Her early leaf’s a flower” (3). This comparison, like the first metaphor, reflects the first green of nature, but this time Frost compares that early green to a flower. this is much more effective; the subject reflects the metaphor you are explicating

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

• Now, we will pause so that you can print a copy of the poem and look for the following:

• What is the form of the poem? • Do you see any consonance, sibilance, alliteration or assonance? • Do you see any examples of metaphor, simile, symbol, or personification?

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Sibilance

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Consonance = “d” and “p” sounds

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Assonance = short “i” sound

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

personification

Sleep is a common symbol (more on this later)

personification

metaphor

A A B A

B B C B

C C D C

D D D D

For each quatrain Frost employs the same rhyme scheme with the 1st, 2nd, and 4th lines sharing the same rhyme– and the 3rd line adding a new rhyme that repeats in the subsequent stanza.

The rhyming sound of here is repeated in queer / near / year in the next quatrain

The rhyming sound of lake is repeated in shake / mistake / flake in the next quatrain

The rhyming sound of sweep is repeated in deep / keep / sleep / sleep in the next quatrain

Note that in the final quatrain the sound of the third line, unlike the third lines in the rest of the poem stays the same as the other three lines

AND the third line and the fourth line are the same (which adds an interesting tone to the lines)

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Thus, the poem is a stanzaic form, consisting of 4 quatrains with a rhyme scheme of aaba / bbcb / ccdc / dddd

• Okay … we should pause again:

• Now try and determine what “happens” in the poem • And what the poet describes • Do not think about what you think the poem means • Do not think about what you think the poet is saying • Think about what the language actually says … • Jot down some notes on your printed copy of the poem

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

I think I know who owns these woods, but his house is in the village (i.e., not near here); therefore, he will not see me stopping by them to watch as the snow fills them.

My horse must think it is strange that we have stopped here by these woods that are not near any farmhouse that we have stopped somewhere between these woods and the frozen lake that we have stopped on the longest night of the evening (winter solstice).

My horse shakes his harness (and the bells of the harness ring) as if he wishes to ask if we have stopped here by mistake. The only other sound I hear is the gentle breeze Of a soft wind and the lightly falling snow in that gentle breeze.

These woods I am looking at are beautiful, dark and deep, (more on this later) However, I have obligations I must tend to, And many miles to travel before I can sleep, And many miles to travel before I can sleep.

The first three stanzas (quatrains) of the poem set up a simple story.

The final quatrain is where the poem becomes tricky. Do no forget that the poem begins –>

— (though not specifically stated in the poem) — with the fact the poet and his horse (who is pulling a sled)

have stopped (on a trip home from somewhere) by (outside of) some woods And the speaker is watching snow fall.

He is not IN the woods; he is BY the woods. We know these facts because of (a) the title and (b) the description in the poem.

The perspective of the poem comes from the speaker who is thinking to himself.

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. The speaker states that he thinks he knows whose woods these are (who owns the land). (1) Possibly, he is not certain. WE can infer that it is difficult to tell where one is when traveling in the snow in the middle of a winter night. (2) He is certain – I think … meaning I know.

The owner of these woods does not live out here in the country. He lives in the village (where POSSIBLY) the speaker also lives. We don’t know. We can infer / suggest the possibility. So, obviously, that person would not see the speaker stopping to watch the snow fall on the woods.

My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. Queer = odd / strange A horse cannot think something is odd / strange. The poet personifies the horse– however– he is not saying the horse DOES think it is odd to have stopped Instead, he says he thinks his horse must think it is odd. From this we can infer that the poet realizes it is strange to stop in the middle of the country on a cold, winter night (for it is strange since it is cold and one could freeze to death) He has stopped where there are no nearby farmhouses) He might not know EXACTLY where he is, but he knows he is by these woods and a frozen lake (either one he has passed or will pass by soon) which implies he has taken this journey before (perhaps many times) It is the winter solstice (12/21) – the longest time of darkness in the year

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. Once again, the horse is personified. A horse cannot ask if a mistake has been made. The horse, we can infer, is shaking its harness bells

(which indicates it is pulling a sled that the poet is traveling with) because cold snow has been falling on it. As before, we can also infer, that the poet realizes it might be a mistake– that it is odd– that he stopped on a cold, snowy evening to watch the woods fill up with snow. Thus we might infer that personifying the horse allows the speaker to focus on the oddity of his choice.

In addition to the sound of the bells on the harness, he also hears the gentles sounds of light wind and snow. The repetition of “s” sounds (sibilance) is very beautiful, and we can infer that it reflects the softness of the falling snow and gentle breeze

He compares, using a metaphor, the sound of the wind to the sound of something being swept– such as a broom across a floor which would create a very soft, swishing sound. He uses downy– which means soft, “pillowy,” fluffy– to describe the snow that is gently falling (not a snowstorm or blizzard– but a gentle falling snow)

We can also infer that before this stanza, the poet has been very much lost in his thoughts– but the sound of the bells being shaken has “awoken” him to his surroundings. Before. He was just thinking about where he was– and now he is employing his senses (namely hearing and next vision).

And now the poem becomes tricky.

The first three stanzas tell a simple story of stopping by some woods to watch the snow fall.

He describes where he thinks he is – and that it is strange to have stopped in such a desolate place on such a cold and long night.

He is thinking to himself.

His thoughts seem to be interrupted by the sound of the bell made by his horse shaking the snow off itself.

As if, possibly, it shakes him into awareness Next, he is going to make a judgment about what he sees.

And now the language gets very ambiguous.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. The first line is very rich and ambiguous. It can be read in two ways

(1) The woods are (a) lovely  beautiful, appealing, alluring (b) dark  literally it is night and hard to see (c) deep  extending far in width

(1) The woods are lovely  beautiful, appealing, alluring AND that loveliness is (a) dark  which also has possible implications of being sinister and dangerous AND (b) deep  which has an implication of being mysterious and thus, potentially, somewhat dangerous, etc.

From this we can infer some very interesting things which we can consider after we finish explicating the poem.

So– the beauty of the woods might be alluring and appealing and aesthetically pleasing to look at, but he clearly has other obligations to attend to (these specific promises (obligations) are not stated but we can infer such things as work, family, etc.)

In addition to these promises / obligations, he also a distance to travel before he can go to sleep. The literal understanding is simply that he has a lot more ground to travel before he gets to where he is going so that he can get to sleep. But sleep is also a fairly common symbol for death, a possibility that can lead us to some interesting things to think about.

This is what the poem simply says (your Actualville). However, the ambiguity of this final quatrain implies much more (Othertown).

Remember … unlike the rest of the quatrains in the poem, this final quatrain does not repeat the pattern of a third line with a different rhyming sound;

instead, it keeps the same rhyming sound in all four lines– AND it repeats the whole line.

That repetition is important! It potentially changes the tone, implying such things as weariness, worry and concern, and, possibly, something sinister and dangerous.

HOWEVER, THE LINES DO NOT SAY THESE THINGS OR MEAN THESE THINGS; THE REPETETITION IMPLIES THESE THINGS!

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

First, we can think of sleep symbolically as death. Sleep as a symbol for death is commonly found in the literatures of the world.

Death is, after all, the Big Sleep. Winter is often symbolized as death as well.

From that potential symbolism, we can infer that he has many miles in his life to go before he dies, and since he has obligations to keep, he has no time for watching snow fall in the woods(as lovely as it may be)

Further, stopping in the middle of the woods on a freezing night is potentially dangerous. One could die. He could fall asleep during his journey the rest of the way home (and he would then die as well).

HOWEVER, THE LINES DO NOT SAY THESE THINGS OR MEAN THESE THINGS; THE LANGUAGE IMPLIES THESE THINGS!

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Next, we should look back at the “woods are lovely, dark and deep.” We can choose to consider the following—–

lovely  beautiful, appealing, alluring AND that loveliness is

(a) dark  which also has possible implications of being sinister and dangerous AND (b) deep  which has an implication of being mysterious and thus, potentially,

somewhat d

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