1. For reading and writing!
Explicating Poetry
For reading and writing!

2. Poetry is like both Fiction & Drama
Consider the poem as a dramatic situation in which a speaker addresses an audience or another character.

3. 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? Why does the speaker feel compelled to speak?
’s of the dramatic situation.

4. 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?

5. SPEAKER The speaker is NOT the poet.
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.

6. Vantage point: Is the speaker
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.

7. “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath
Example of Persona

8. Persona
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.
By creating a persona, the poet imagines what it is like to enter someone else's personality.

9. “Mirror” (cont’d) Now I am a lake
“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.

10. 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.

11. Audience
Audience = the person or people whom the speaker is addressing. 
Identifying the audience within a poem helps you to understand the poem better.

12. 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.

13. Readers & “General” Audiences
The speaker can also address the
reader as audience
a general reader - audience Or
specialized reader - audience

14. 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 reader-audience, 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.

15. 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?

16. 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

17. 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.

18. 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?

19. 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?

20. 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

21. Note the use of speaker & imagery
Imagery Poems
Note the use of
speaker & imagery

22. “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

23. 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.

24. “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

25. “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.

26. Coming soon: Figures of Speech
End of presentation