EXPLICATING A POEM
(modified from a list of explication questions from How Poetry Works)
The Initial Experience
1. THE FIRST REACTION TO THE POEM
 What is your first response to the poem? Is there a specific image, line,
word, sound, or section of the poem that strikes you as important or
interesting? Is there anything in the poem that connects you to your own
experience?
2. 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.
3. SETTING OF THE POEM
 Where does the poem take place? How do you know?
4. SPEAKER
 Differentiate between author and speaker (Is the speaker different from
the author? Is this point important?). Is the speaker a part of the action
of the poem, or is he a part of it?
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
5. IMAGES
 What are 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
6. SOUND
 Read the poem aloud. Notice patterns according to sound in the poem.
 Word choice
o Which words stick out in the poem as being important?
o Repetition
o Oxymorons
o Puns
 Rhyme
o Identify a rhyme pattern (ABAB, for instance)
o End-rhyme and internal rhymes
o Assonance
 Alliteration
 Meter
o Iambic pentameter—how to scan a poem
o Trochaic
o Spondee
 Line structure
o Length
o Breaks
 enjambment
7. IMPORTANCE OF THE TITLE
 How does the title support what you see as the meaning of the poem?
8. BEGINNING AND END OF THE POEM
 Why does the poet begin and end here?
The Culminating Experience
9. 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?
 Mood (relates to the reader)
 What is the mood of the reader as a result the speaker’s tone?
What mood is created by the poem?
10. MEANING OF THE POEM
 What is the poet trying to say?
 Theme
o A one-word theme or category for the poem
o A one-sentence statement that expresses a universal or
primordial truth represented in or by the poem
 Connections—Is this poem a metaphor? How is it a metaphor?
o to other literature
o to history course
o to contemporary society
o to personal experience

A poem “begins in delight and ends in wisdom” (Frost)