Explicating Poetry
For reading and writing!
Poetry is like both Fiction & Drama
Consider the poem as a dramatic
situation in which a speaker addresses
an audience or another character.
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?
’s
Why does the speaker feel compelled to speak?
of the dramatic situation.
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?
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.
Who is the Speaker?
As you begin to write your poem, consider whose voice will speak.
Determine the speaker’s:
•
•
•
•
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 speaker’s identity.
“Mirror” by Sylvia Plath
Example of Persona
Persona
By creating a
persona,
the poet
imagines
what it is like
to enter
someone
else's
personality.
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 dislike
I 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 long
I think it is a part of my heart.
But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
“Mirror”
(cont’d)
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 woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
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 subject—the woman who fears growing old.
Source: Jeannine Johnson, in an overview of "Mirror," in Poetry for Students, Gale, 1997.
Audience
Audience = the person or people
whom the speaker is addressing.
• Identifying the audience within a
poem helps you to understand the
poem better.
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.
Readers & “General” Audiences
The speaker can also address the
reader as audience
a general reader - audience
Or
specialized reader - audience
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 readeraudience, 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.
The Speaker’s 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?
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
A Poem’s 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.
A Poem’s 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?
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?
Imagery adds to the reader’s 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
Imagery Poems
Note the use of
speaker & imagery
“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 hook
An open eye
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
image—binding, holding...(note the sexual connotations).
However, lines 3 & 4 reveal painful imagery.
• The imagery, more than anything else, conveys the poem’s
meaning.
“This Is Just to Say”
(imagery & tone)
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
“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.
Coming soon:
Figures of Speech
End of presentation