Poetry Explication Guidelines

Poetry Explication Guidelines
The following can serve as a general outline for your explications. You will have to add and organize your own subheadings, or you may have to delete some sections. You may also use other orders of ideas that may suit your particular content. Just be sure your explication is thorough and organized. I. Introduction a. (Include such items as what is the poem title, who is the author, and where did you get your copy? What is the theme and subject of the poem?) II. The poem a. (Is it a lyric poem? Is it an ode, haiku, sonnet or some other form you can identify?) III. Paraphrases of lines/stanzas IV. Traits and examples/explanations a. (This is where you discuss alliteration,
Theme a. (Propose what the theme is and support/defend your interpretation. The object is to show that you have reached a reasonable conclusion. Think Rockwell painting-How do you know? What evidence supports your interpretation?) VI. Evaluation a. (Make judgments about the poem. SUGGESTIONS/EXAMPLES: How well did the author do at making his/her point or creating an intended mood or other impact? Which elements were the strongest or weakest and why? Were some images or metaphors particularly interesting or effective and why? Did the rhyme scheme contribute to the poem or distract? Etc., etc., etc.) VII. Personal reactions a. (SUGGESTIONS/EXAMPLES: What did you like or not like and why? How did you feel after reading the poem? Did it give you a new perspective or was it trite and why? Did it relate to you, or was it so foreign an idea that it did not seem to pertain to you, and
Even if readers did not know that "road" was being used metaphorically, they would still know the poem is about a man making a choice. Using the idea of roads is something we can relate to because we have probably all come to two roads, literally, and have been uncertain about which way to turn. Sometimes we have turned and found that it was the wrong way and that has cost us time, made us late, or lead us somewhere we did not want to go. We can see in some way how even relatively insignificant decisions alter our lives, at least a