ICE Technique with Poetry
1. Write a topic sentence that shows your insight into the poem.
Example: In his poem “Oranges” Gary Soto captures the feeling and power of
adolescent love.
2. Find places in the poem where the author’s words prove your topic
sentence. To illustrate my topic sentence, I could talk about the tone and
voice of the poem, the imagery of the poem and the symbolism or metaphors
in the poem. If I were writing an entire essay, I could do all three; but
for one paragraph, I will choose just one.
3. Use the ICE Method to prove your insights.
Introduce the passage. Talk about the situation in the poem before quoting
the words, phrases or lines from it. Or, refer to the significance this
passage holds before quoting it.
4. Your paragraph should quote at least two places in the text. It should
be approximately ½ page in length, in 12-point font, and double-spaced.
Cite the line number of the poem where the words, phrases, or line(s)
appeared in the poem. Use parenthesis after the quotation marks.
 When quoting two consecutive lines of poetry, place a / between the
lines.
 If more than 3 lines of poetry are being quoted use a colon when you
introduce the lines, indent all the lines 10 spaces from the LH
margin, do not place quotation marks around the lines, and put the
lines in parenthesis when finishing the quotation.
Explain the point of the words, phrases, or lines you have just quoted as
they relate to the topic sentence.
Remember to use solid paragraph structure!
A solid paragraph has a topic sentence with a clear key idea that focuses
the paragraph.
A solid paragraph usually ends with a clincher sentence where the main
idea is summarized or referenced once again.
Sample Paragraph: (Please double space. This example is singled spaced.)
In his poem “Oranges”, Gary Soto sets a tone that captures the feeling and
power of adolescent love. Children often talk with simple and direct
sentences. The speaker’s choice of words in the poem and the raw
simplicity of the way he tells his story illustrate his youth and the
honesty that comes with it. Everything he says, such as, “The first time I
walked with a girl, I was twelve”(1), is straightforward and simple, much
like childhood love. Children tend to have more pure and simple feelings
for one another than adults because their lives are less complicated. Yet,
even adults can remember the nervous innocence of infatuation. In the
poem, the store clerk shows that she has not forgotten her youth: “The
lady’s eyes met mine, / and held them, knowing / very well what it was all
/ about” (39). She is sympathetic to his situation and takes his orange
and his nickel in payment for the candy rather than embarrass him in front
of the girl he admires. This is a simple moment of unspoken understanding
between the clerk and the speaker in the poem. Her compassion adds to the
tone of the poem, helping to capture those simple yet intense feelings of
adolescent love that most people experience at some point in life.
Soto also uses contrasting imagery to portray the feeling of
adolescent love. Within the first seven lines of the poem the
narrator tells you that it is a cold, gray December day. The
first time the oranges are introduced, the narrator simply tells
you that he is “Weighed down with two oranges in my jacket". The
bright image and color of the oranges immediately begins to
infuse light, happiness, and love into the scene by contrasting
with the cold, frosty December atmosphere. The oranges have the
ability to do this because of a connotative connection with the
bright color of the oranges and light. Later, the narrator
notices that the girl’s porch light is always on despite the
weather or the time of day. This image again brings up light that
in turn reflects back to the brightness of the oranges. Then the
girl appears, “Pulling at her gloves, face bright with rouge".
The bright rouge color in her face links her with the oranges and
their light, as well. Every image that includes light adds to the
growing feeling of love and warmth within the dreary
surroundings, because love and warmth are most often associated
with light and happiness. This everlasting light reappears again
and again throughout the poem shown through light in the girl’s
eyes, her smile, and the way the orange looks like fire in the
boy’s hands. Every contrasting image of light is linked to
another and continuously intensifies the growing feeling of young
love and happiness.
Lastly, Gary Soto uses symbolism to show the strength of youthful
love. He writes, "Cold, and weighed down with two oranges in my
jacket". The oranges weighting down the narrators jacket
symbolize the way his love for the girl is weighing upon him.
This weight is created from the strong feelings he has for the
girl and his hopes that she likes him too. As the couple walks
down the street, they encounter a line of "newly planted trees".
The trees symbolize something new and young that will grow in the
future, much like the love between the boy and the girl. Later,
the narrator tells us, “We entered, the tiny bell bringing a
saleslady down a narrow aisle of goods”. The tiny bell and the
aisle exemplify a wedding that immediately connects to love
between the boy and the girl. The poem ends by saying, “I peeled
my orange that was so bright against the gray of December that,
from a distance, someone might have thought I was making a fire
in my hands”. The narrator used fire to show the intensity of
the young couples love through extreme brightness and warmth.
The symbolism in Gary Soto's poem “Oranges” conveys how powerful
adolescent love can be.
The entire poem is just a narration about walking
with a girl, yet through the use of tone, contrasting imagery,
and symbolism, Gary Soto has captured the power and emotion of
young love. Oranges just represent what that young love feeds off
of: warmth, love, and understanding.