Explicating Poetry

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Explicating Poetry

• For reading and writing!

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Poetry is like both Fiction Drama

• Consider the poem as a dramatic situation in
  which a speaker addresses an audience or another
  character.

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When planning to write a poem...
Determine the basic design of the poem by
considering the
Who? Who is speaking, to whom, about whom?
What? What is the subject?
When? When is it set? When does the main action
occur?
Where? Where does the main action occur? Where is
it set?

Why? Why does the speaker feel compelled to
speak?

• s of the dramatic situation.

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Title

• What will the title contribute to the reader's
  understanding of the poem?
• Will you write the title first or after the text
  of the poem is finished?

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SPEAKER

• In fiction, the voice telling the story is called
  the narrator. In poetry, this person is the
  speaker.
• The speaker is NOT the poet.
• Just as a novelist creates a character to
  narrate, a poet creates a character to be the
  speaker, and that character is called the
  persona.
• Some poems have multiple voices which feature
  more than one speaker. Sometimes these
  multi-speaker poems present a dialogue among
  speakers.

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Who is the Speaker?
As you begin to write your poem, consider whose
voice will speak. Determine the speakers

• Gender
• Age
• Values
• Sensibilities

• Consistency throughout
• Reliability
• Sincerity
• Level of awareness

• Vantage point Is the speaker
• actively participating?
• Observing? Moving or standing still?
• Speaking from a position of power or weakness?
• Reflecting upon a past event?
• Fantasizing? Imagining the future?

The Greek word "persona" means mask. Assuming the
voice of a historical or imagined figure in a
poem can free the writer. However, be careful
with personas don't make the identity of your
speaker too mysterious. Make sure that the
reader can determine the speakers identity.
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Mirror by Sylvia Plath

• Example of Persona

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Persona
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
I am silver
and exact.
I have no preconceptions.Whatever I see, I
swallow immediately.Just as it is, unmisted by
love or dislikeI am not cruel, only truthful
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.Most of
the time I meditate on the opposite wall.It is
pink, with speckles.
I have looked at it so longI think
it is a part of my heart.
But it flickers.Faces and darkness separate
us over and over.

• By creating a persona, the poet imagines what
  it is like to enter someone else's personality.

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• Mirror (contd)
  Now I am
  a lake.
  
  A woman bends over me, Searching my
  reaches for what she really is.Then she turns to
  those liars, the candles or the moon.I see her
  back, and reflect it faithfully.She rewards me
  with tears and an agitation of hands.I am
  important to her. She comes and goes.Each
  morning it is her face that replaces the
  darkness.In me she has drowned a young girl, and
  in me an old womanRises toward her day after
  day, like a terrible fish.

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The Speaker in Mirror

• The title of Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" reveals the
  speaker's identity. (Remember the importance of
  title?)
• In Mirror, Plath employs a persona by taking on
  the voice of a mirror. A mirror that later
  changes into a lake is the speaker.
• Plath gives an inanimate object--in this case a
  glass mirror--the human capacity for speech. From
  this unexpected first-person perspective, we
  learn a great deal about an everyday object that
  we might otherwise take for granted.
• Although it is personified, the mirror claims for
  itself a kind of nonjudgmental and unemotional
  character that human beings lack. It announces in
  the first line of the poem, "I am silver and
  exact. I have no preconceptions."
• Later, as a lake, a more animated entity, the
  speaker reveals more about the subjectthe woman
  who fears growing old.
• Source  Jeannine Johnson, in an overview of
  "Mirror," in Poetry for Students, Gale, 1997.

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Audience

• Audience the person or people whom the speaker
  is addressing. 
• Identifying the audience within a poem helps you
  to understand the poem better.

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Audience

• Speakers address many types of audiences
• The speaker can address a specific person by name
  or position. (Look for the word you.)
• The speaker can address a character who is not
  present, dead, or that cannot possibly respond
  (like a flower or a city) which is called
  apostrophe.

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Readers General Audiences

• The speaker can also address the
• reader as audience
• a general reader - audience
• Or
• specialized reader - audience

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Readers General Audiences

• a general reader audience When addressing a
  general reader-audience, the speaker has no
  specific target group in mind.
• specialized reader audience When addressing a
  more specialized reader-audience, the speaker
  assumes the reader has some particular knowledge,
  common concern, bias, shared ideology, level of
  education or literary familiarity etc...
• For example, mentioning some passages from the
  Bhagavad-Gita would indicate an expectation that
  the audience is at least vaguely familiar with
  Indian culture and religion.

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The Speakers Motivation

• What is the situation being presented?
• What compels the speaker to express him/herself
  to the audience?
• What has happened in the past, or what is
  happening in the present, that has brought about
  the speech/poem?

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Subject vs. Theme

• Do you plan to present an object, place,
  situation that has a deeper meaning?
• For example, you may want to discuss life as a
  journey, a travel down a highway. You may be
  hitchhiking through life or picking up
  hitchhikers as you go.
• Your subject is traveling roads
• Your theme is the journey/adventure of life

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A Poems Words

• The language of a poem is vital.
• Poets choose each word deliberately.
• In poetry, each word counts!
• There are no extra or wasted words.

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A Poems Words

• Diction or Word Choice 
• What type of language will you use colloquial,
  formal, simple, unusual, slang, dialect?
• What moods or attitudes do you want the reader to
  associate with the words you select?
• Which words do you want to stand out for the
  reader?

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Imagery appeal to the 5 senses
"Imagery is best defined as the total sensory
suggestion of poetry" (John Ciardi, World Book
Dictionary def. of "Imagery.")

• Images are very concrete "word pictures" having
  to do with the five senses--touch, smell, taste,
  sound, movement, and especially sight.
• Imagery allows readers to experience
  ideas vividly.
• When writing a poem, consider which mental images
  you want to present.
• Start with VISUAL images then consider
  all physical sensations--sounds, tastes, smells
  and so on. What ideas do these different images
  imply--what connotations do these images have?

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Imagery adds to the readers experience in
reading your poem

• For example, if a poet compares something to a
  ship, the reader might think about

• what ships look like
• what it feels like to be on a ship
• how ships move
• where they go
• sights, sounds, smells and sensations associated
  with ships

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Imagery Poems

• Note the use of
• speaker imagery

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You fit into me by Margaret Atwood

• (Note the use of symbol and imagery)
• You fit into me like a hook into an eye
• A fish hookAn open eye

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The imagery makes the audience shudder...

• Atwood uses imagery to describe the speaker's
  relationship.
• She uses a common hook and eye, like what one
  would find on a dress (or lingerie), to
  illustrate compatibility, but then we have a
  contrasting image The lines "a fish hook/ An
  open eye"(3,4), show how this would be a helpless
  relationship in which the partners injured one
  another.
• The hook and eye in the first lines present a
  positive imagebinding, holding...(note the
  sexual connotations). However, lines 3 4 reveal
  painful imagery.
• The imagery, more than anything else, conveys the
  poems meaning.

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This Is Just to Say (imagery tone) by
William Carlos Williams

• I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe
  iceboxand which you were probablysavingfor
  breakfastForgive methey were deliciousso
  sweetand so cold

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In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound (note
importance of title)

• The apparition of these faces in the crowd 
• Petals on a wet, black bough.

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Coming soon Figures of Speech

• End of presentation