A poetry explication is a relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. Writing an 14/03/ · If you’re ready to get started writing your own explication essay, follow the five steps below: 1. Pick a work to explain or explicate. The first step in writing an explication essay is to Poetry Explication words 4 page (s) The poem “The Tyger”, written by William Blake (Kirszner and Mandell, ), explores the idea of the sublime, which involves the
Explication Essay Writing
A poetry explication is a relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. This handout reviews some of the important techniques of poem explication essay and writing a poetry explication, and includes parts of two sample explications. How did the poem affect you as a reader? This can encompass thoughts, emotions, moods, ideas, etc. You can ask yourself what affective, or emotional, atmosphere the poem produced, even if something about it is difficult to describe. What adjective would you use to describe the tone of the poem? How did the poem poem explication essay you feel generally? Did the poem bring to mind certain ideas or images, etc.?
Does the poem have an identifiable speaker or addressee? Is the poem attributed to a specific speaker, or is this unclear or ambiguous? Is the speaker clearly addressing a specific second person audience, or a general one, or does this not come up? Is there a specific dramatic motivation driving the speaker to speak? What seems to be the larger theme, or point, of the poem? This is the first question to try to address. Does the poem seem to be an attempt to understand something? To appreciate something? To express a feeling? To work through a complex idea? To convey an image? Some combination of motivations? In fact, this sense of mystery can encourage further thought when trying to explicate a poem. Keep thinking carefully about the intricacies of the language and you may be able to convey some of this sense in your explication.
Some of the details we should consider include the following:. Some of the most common patterns include the following:. Meter from the Greek metron, meaning measure refers principally to the recurrence of regular beats in a poetic line. In this way, meter pertains to the structure of the poem as it is written. The most common form of meter in English verse since the 14th century is accentual-syllabic meter, in which the basic unit is the foot. The following are the four most common metrical feet in English poetry:. Any number above six hexameter is heard as a combination of smaller parts; for example, what we might call heptameter seven feet in a line is indistinguishable aurally from successive lines of tetrameter and trimeter To scan a line is to determine its metrical pattern.
Poem explication essay the best way to begin scanning a line is to mark the natural stresses on the polysyllabic words. Rhythm refers particularly to the way poem explication essay line poem explication essay voiced, i. Often, when a reader reads a line of verse, choices of stress and unstress may need to be made. If we determine the regular pattern of beats the meter of this poem explication essay, we will most likely identify the line as iambic pentameter. If we read the line this way, the statement takes on a musing, somewhat disinterested tone. However, poem explication essay, because the first five words are monosyllabic, we may choose to read the line differently.
In fact, we may be poem explication essay, especially when reading aloud, to stress the first two syllables equally, making the opening an emphatic, directive statement. Note that monosyllabic words allow the meaning of the line to vary according to which words we choose to stress when reading i, poem explication essay. In this way, poem explication essay, the poet forges a tension between meter and rhythm: does the word remain contained by the structure, or do we choose to stretch the word out of the normal poem explication essay, thereby disobeying the structure in which poem explication essay was made?
Such tension adds meaning to the poem by using meter and rhythm to dramatize certain conflicts. In this example, Milton forges such a tension to present immediately the essential conflicts that lead to the fall of Adam and Eve. The explication should follow the same format as the preparation: begin with the large issues and basic design of the poem and work through each line to the more specific details and patterns, poem explication essay. The first paragraph should present the large issues; it should inform the reader which conflicts are dramatized and should describe the dramatic situation of the speaker.
The explication does not require a formal introductory paragraph; the writer should simply start explicating immediately. Such a beginning ensures that you will introduce the major conflict or theme in the poem and organize your explication accordingly. Here is an example. This poem dramatizes the conflict between appearance and reality, particularly as this conflict relates to what the speaker seems to say and what he really says. From Westminster Bridge, the speaker looks at London at sunrise, and he explains that all people should poem explication essay struck by such a beautiful scene. In this way, the speaker seems to say simply that London looks beautiful in the morning. The next paragraphs should expand the discussion of the conflict by focusing on details of form, rhetoric, syntax, and vocabulary.
In these paragraphs, the writer should explain the poem line by line in terms of these details, and he or she should incorporate important elements of rhyme, rhythm, and meter during this discussion. However, the poem begins with several oddities that poem explication essay the speaker is saying more than what he seems to say initially. For example, the poem is an Italian sonnet and follows the abbaabbacdcdcd rhyme scheme. The fact that the poet chooses to write a sonnet about London in an Italian form suggests that what he says may not be actually praising the city. The explication has no formal concluding paragraph; do not simply restate the main points of the introduction!
The end of the explication should focus on sound effects or visual patterns as the final element of asserting an explanation, poem explication essay. Or, as does the undergraduate here, the writer may choose simply to stop writing when he or she reaches the end of the poem:. In this way, poem explication essay, the poet reinforces the conflict between the appearance of the city in the morning and what such a scene and his words actually reveal. Use the present tense when writing the explication. The poem, as a work of literature, continues to exist! Fountain, fountain, poem explication essay, what do you say Singing at night alone?
Secondly, the speaker not only addresses the fountain but asserts that it speaks and sings, personifying the object with vocal abilities. The first strophe, four lines of alternating 4- and 3-foot lines, takes the form of a ballad stanza. In this way, the poem begins by suggesting that it will be story that will perhaps teach a certain lesson, poem explication essay. The opening trochees and repetition stress the address to the fountain, poem explication essay, and the iamb which ends line 1 and the trochee that begins line 2 stress the actions of the fountain itself. The second strophe expands the conflicts as the speaker questions the fountain. Since the moon, an object far away in the heavens, controls the ocean, the sea cannot be free as the speaker asserts. Poem explication essay, the line refers to the ocean; in this respect the water cannot escape its boundary or control its own motions.
Also, the direct statement of the last line certainly addresses the poem explication essay speaker as well as the human reader. This statement implies that we are all trapped or controlled by some remote object or entity. Our own thoughts are restricted by our mortality as well as by our limits of relying on appearances. By personifying a voiceless object, the poem presents a different perception of reality, placing poem explication essay reader in the same position of the speaker and inviting the reader to question the conflict between appearance and reality, between what we see and what we can know. The writer observes and presents many of the most salient points of poem explication essay short poem, but she could indeed organize the explication more coherently, poem explication essay.
In this way, the writer could explore the implications of the dramatic situation even further: why does the speaker ask a question of a mute object? Finally, poem explication essay, the writer could include a more detailed consideration of rhythm, meter, and rhyme. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4. You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Make a Gift. Skip to main content.
How To Analyse A Poem
, time: 5:09How to write an explication essay with examples
21/09/ · What is a Explication Essay? An explication essay is a classic type of essay that requires a close reading of a passage, verse, poem, or excerpt in order to perform a detailed Poetry Explication words 4 page (s) The poem “The Tyger”, written by William Blake (Kirszner and Mandell, ), explores the idea of the sublime, which involves the A poetry explication is a relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem. Writing an
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