Assignment:
Essay: Poetry Explication
Length: 750 to 900 words
Outside sources: none.
Format: You are required to use MLA style, as for all writing assignments. Please refer to the MLA Format PowerPoint in the Content Section.
Instructions:
For this essay. Choose one of the poems either from the textbook or another poem by one of the authors in the textbook, and do an analysis of the work. (This should be the same poem you've indicated in your post in Discussion 6.2.)
Explain what the poem means. what the voice in the poem is trying to tell us. and how the images/language work together to communicate that meaning.
The best approach would be to take the poem stanza by stanza. or line by line. and discuss what each stanza or line is doing.
NOTE: Do not fall into the paraphrase trap: that is do not take your reader line by line just to fill your essay with words. The point of explication is not to retell the poem: instead, you are explicating to point out in the poem those elements that need interpreting or those places within the poem where you find something interesting. Although the goal of explicating is to explain as much about a poem as is necessary. You should explicate reservedly and intelligently.