Download Explication Strategies for English Poem Analysis and more Assignments English Language in PDF only on Docsity! Explication Strategies English 4HW, Spring 2002 (J. Galvan) Explication (or close reading) means examining word choices and formal features with an extremely close eye. The goal is to get past the summary level of the poem, as well as the general themes of the poem, to figure out how the author has created meaning on a more subtle, small-scale level. The analysis you offer in an explication will expand on, explore the implications of, or complicate the general themes in the poem. (1) On a separate sheet of paper, paraphrase the poem. Break it up into manageable portions (like sentences or stanzas), and restate its ideas in your own words and in minute detail. Make sure that you can identify what is going on, who is speaking, who (if anybody) the poem is addressed to, and its basic ideas or themes. Look up any words that are unfamiliar to you. Besides giving you an initial sense of the poem’s basic ideas, this step will help you in the long run to mentally separate paraphrase/summary from analysis. (2) Type the poem (double-spaced) onto another sheet of paper. Leave enough room to circle, underline, and make notes in the margins. (3) Read the poem slowly and try to get a mental picture of what’s occurring. Visualizing the images or events in the poem will allow you to concentrate on how they function. (4) Mark up your copy, taking note of the poem’s: (a) images (visual and otherwise) (b) figurative features (metaphors, similes, symbols, puns…) (c) structural features (metrical, scheme, rhyme scheme, organization of ideas or argument, line breaks, punctuation…) (d) sound effects (rhyme, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia…) (e) tone (serious, comical, bitter, effusive…) (f) general rhetorical purpose (to describe something/someone, to persuade a character or the reader of something, to express emotion…) (5) Use your observations from #4 to brainstorm questions about the poem. For example: Can you identify any patterns of imagery or figurative language (e.g., images that all have to do with acting or the theater), and if so what is this the significance of this pattern? Do any words seem ambiguous, punning, or to connote a secondary meaning? What are the connotations of a given metaphor? If there is a deviation from the rhyme scheme, how might that deviation be meaningful? How do the words in a given rhyming pair relate to one another? Why is the poem’s argument organized in the way it is? How does the tone of the poem relate to its content or ideas? (6) Brainstorm possible answers to the questions you have asked. Make sure none of your answers (your interpretations) seems illogical in terms of the poem’s basic ideas. When you plug each interpretation back into the poem, does it make sense? Is it supported by your
