EXPLICATING a POEM (Modified from a List of Explication Questions from How Poetry Works)

EXPLICATING a POEM (Modified from a List of Explication Questions from How Poetry Works)

English—Reinstein Name: EXAMPLE RESPONSE—ALAN REINSTEIN

RESPONDING TO A POEM

(modified from a list of explication questions from How Poetry Works)

TITLE AND AUTHOR: There is no frigate like a book

The Initial Experience

  • Read the poem slowly—at least twice. Stop at the line breaks, but pause only slightly, and then continue reading as if the poem were written in prose. (This is called “reading to punctuation.”) Remember to read slowly, and let the words soak in.
  • The first reaction to the poem—What is your first response to the poem? Write down a specific image, line, word, sound, or section of the poem that strikes you as important or interesting? How does the poem connect to your own experience?

My first reaction is to think about my own experiences reading a book when I felt transported by a novel—or by poetry, when I felt connected to the author speaking to me. The line “to take us lands away” is the one that speaks to me the most.

  • Speaker and Setting of the poem—First ask yourself: Does identifying the speaker and setting appear to be a significant aspect of getting at the greater meaning of the poem? Differentiate between author and speaker (Is the speaker different from the author? Is this point important?). Is the speaker apart from the action of the poem, or is he a part of it? And where does the poem take place? How do you know?

The speaker and the poet seem to be the same—which does not seem too significant. The poet is celebrating the power of books to transport—transfix readers.

  • Literal meaning—Try to get at what is happening in the poem—line by line. Keeping in mind that most poems are written in complete sentences, try to re-state each sentence in the poem OR write a one-sentence summary that states what is going on in the poem.

Books have the power to absorb a person so much that they are transported to the fictional world created by the author. It’s like you are traveling around the world just by immersing yourself in a book.

An Examination of Poetic Techniques—know them so that you can recognize patterns, but of equal importance is to see where the pattern is broken, because this is where the poet is speaking to the reader. [Remember DIDLS: Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, Syntax.]

  • Images—Write down the specific images that are in the poem? Remember that images are based on any of the senses—sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, and movement. List as many as you can? Do you see any patterns? Figures of speech. Which, if any, figures of speech are represented in the poem? Simile, metaphor, personification, allusion, symbolism.

All metaphors. A book = a boat

a page of poetry = horses

a book = chariot carrying the human soul

  • Sound—Read the poem aloud. Notice patterns according to sound in the poem. Write down the key sound elements (one or two from the list below) from the poem. What is most notable about the author’s use of sound?

  • Word choice—Which words stick out in the poem as being important? Do you see words or sounds repeated?
  • Rhyme—Can you identify a rhyme pattern (ABAB, for instance)
  • Meter—When you speak the lines naturally, do you notice a rhythm or beat to the lines?
  • Line structure—What does the length of the lines say about the poem? Is there variety in length? Are the lines broken up mid-sentence or mid-phrase (called enjambment)?

Rhyme—ABCB DEFE—OR you could call it ABCB—since it’s like a two-quatrain poem. The meter is iambic tetrameter/iambic trimeter—very predictable and uncomplicated meter. The simple rhyme and meter make for easy reading—a child-friendly structure, too.

  • Importance of the title—How does the title support what you see as the meaning of the poem? Don’t take the title lightly, since it is the author’s first announcement to the reader about the poem.

Not much to say here, since the title is simply the first line of the poem—and Dickenson’s poems were mainly untitled. However, her the title is really the main idea of the poem—that a book is something that transports a reader to distant worlds.

The Culminating Experience

  • Tone/mood
  • Tone (relates to the speaker)—Based on your personal response and the effect of the poetic techniques, what is the tone of the speaker in the poem?

The tone is confident in announcing a truth about the power of reading literature

  • Mood (relates to the reader)—What is the mood of the reader as a result the speaker’s tone? What mood or feeling do you think the reader is meant to have?

The mood for the reader is reflective, considering the meaningful statement of the poet.

  • Meaning of the poem—What is the poet trying to say? A poem “begins in delight and ends in wisdom” (Frost). Write a one-sentence statement (or two) that expresses a universal truth represented in or by the poem. What do you think the author is getting at.

The poem is an uncomplicated statement about the power of reading—but I think that final word is important—the “soul”—that a book does more than transport a reader through exciting his or her imagination—but that it brings their soul to a new place, too.

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