Essay Instructions: Choose one of the poems from the list below and compose a written explication of that poem. Your explication should be 750-1000 words, analyzing one or more of the poem's elements. Your explication is not a summary of what the poem is about. Nor are you expected to unravel the poem?s ?meaning.? Rather, you are explaining how the poet used a particular poetic element, and you are analyzing how that element affects the rest of the poem.
When writing your explication:
? Choose a poem that is adequately profound to sustain a detailed analysis.
? Include a thesis statement that states the element you are analyzing and why.
? Follow a systematic writing pattern by analyzing the element on which you are focusing line by line or stanza by stanza.
? Provide textual examples (words, phrases, and lines) from the poem to illustrate your analytical statements. Cite your sources.
? See http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/poetry-explication.html for a detailed example of a poetry explication.
Poems to Choose From:
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER, "West Indian Primer."
SHERMAN J. ALEXIE, "Defending Walt Whitman."
ANONYMOUS, "Bonny Barbara Allan."
ANONYMOUS, "Go Down, Moses."
ANONYMOUS, "Western Wind."
MATTHEW ARNOLD, "Dover Beach."
JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA, "Family Ties."
ELIZABETH BISHOP, "The Fish."
ELIZABETH BISHOP, "One Art."
WILLIAM BLAKE, "The Lamb."
WILLIAM BLAKE, "To see a World in a Grain of Sand."
WILLIAM BLAKE, "The Tyger."
ANNE BRADSTREET, "The Author to Her Book."
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON, "She Walks in Beauty."
ROSEMARY CATACALOS, "Morning Geograph."
LUCILLE CLIFTON, "At the Cemetery, Walnut Grove Plantation, South Carolina, 1989."
JUDITH ORTIZ COFER, "Lessons of the Past."
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, "Kubla Khan."
BILLY COLLINS, "Introduction to Poetry."
WENDY COPE, "Bloody Men."
BILL COYLE, "Aubade."
E. E. CUMMINGS, "Buffalo Bill's."
E. E. CUMMINGS, "next to of course god america i."
SILVIA CURBELO, "If You Need a Reason."
JIM DANIELS, "Short-Order Cook."
ANGELA DE HOYOS, "Woman, Woman."
EMILY DICKINSON, "After great pain, a formal feeling comes?."
EMILY DICKINSON, "Because I could not stop for Death?."
EMILY DICKINSON, "'Faith' is a fine invention."
EMILY DICKINSON, "I dwell in Possibility?."
EMILY DICKINSON, "I heard a Fly buzz?when I died?."
EMILY DICKINSON, "Success is counted sweetest."
EMILY DICKINSON, Tell all the Truth but tell it slant?."
EMILY DICKINSON, "Wild Nights?Wild Nights!"
JOHN DONNE, "Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God."
JOHN DONNE, "Death Be Not Proud."
JOHN DONNE, "The Flea."
CAROL ANN DUFFY, "Mrs. Darwin."
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR, "We Wear the Mask."
RUSSELL EDSON, "The Fall."
T. S. ELIOT, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
JAMES A. EMANUEL, "Emmett Till."
LOUISE ERDRICH, "Indian Boarding School: The Runaways."
MART?N ESPADA, "The Community College Revises Its Curriculum in Response to Changing Demographics."
ROBERT FROST, "Acquainted with the Night."
ROBERT FROST, "Design."
ROBERT FROST, "Mending Wall."
ROBERT FROST, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."
DAVID GRAHAM, "The Dogs in Dutch Paintings."
THOMAS HARDY, "The Convergence of the Twain."
JOY HARJO, "Perhaps the World Ends Here."
H. D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE), "Helen."
SEAMUS HEANEY, "Mid-Term Break."
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY, "Invictus."
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS, "God's Grandeur."
A. E. HOUSMAN, "When I Was One-and-Twenty."
ANDREW HUDGINS, "Elegy for My Father, Who Is Not Dead."
DONALD JUSTICE, "Men at Forty."
JOHN KEATS, "La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad."
JOHN KEATS, "Ode on a Grecian Urn."
JOHN KEATS, "When I Have Fears."
STEVE KOWIT, "The Grammar Lesson."
PHILIP LARKIN, "The Explosion."
LI-YOUNG LEE, "From Blossoms."
JAN HELLER LEVI, "Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad."
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, "A Psalm of Life."
ROBERT LOWELL, "Skunk Hour."
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH, "Ars Poetica."
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love."
CLAUDE MCKAY, "If We Must Die."
W. S. MERWIN, "For the Anniversary of My Death."
CZESLAW MILOSZ, "Encounter."
JOHN MILTON, "When I consider how my light is spent."
PAT MORA, "La Migra."
HOWARD NEMEROV, "The War in the Air."
PABLO NERUDA, "Tonight I Can Write."
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, "Famous."
FRANK O'HARA, "Ave Maria."
SHARON OLDS, "The One Girl at the Boys' Party."
LINDA PASTAN, "Ethics."
LINDA PASTAN, "Marks."
LINDA PASTAN, "Reading the Obituary Page."
MARGE PIERCY, "Barbie doll."
LEROY V. QUINTANA, "Poem for Salt."
LEROY V. QUINTANA, "Taps."
SIR WALTER RALEIGH, "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd."
HENRY REED, "Naming of Parts."
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON, "Miniver Cheevy."
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON, "Richard Cory."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments."
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, "Ode to the West Wind."
CHARLES SIMIC, "The Partial Explanation."
DAVID R. SLAVITT, "Titanic."
PATRICIA SMITH, "Hip-Hop Ghazal."
STEVIE SMITH, "Not Waving but Drowning."
CATHY SONG, "Picture Bride."
WALLACE STEVENS, "Anecdote of the Jar."
WALLACE STEVENS, "The Emperor of Ice-Cream."
VIRGIL SU?REZ, "Aguacero."
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, "Break, Break, Break."
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, "The Eagle."
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, "Ulysses."
DYLAN THOMAS, "Fern Hill."
TOM WAYMAN, "Wayman in Love."
CHARLES WEBB, "The Death of Santa Claus."
PHILLIS WHEATLEY, "On Being Brought from Africa to America."
WALT WHITMAN, "A Noiseless Patient Spider."
WALT WHITMAN, from "Song of Myself."
C. K. WILLIAMS, "First Desires."
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802." WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, "London, 1802."
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, "My heart leaps up when I behold."
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, "The Solitary Reaper."
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop."
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, "He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven."
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death."
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree."
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, "Sailing to Byzantium."
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, "The Second Coming."
KEVIN YOUNG, "Song of Smoke." Poetry Sampler: Poetry and Art.
RITA DOVE, "Sonnet in Primary Colors."
ALLEN GINSBERG, "Cezanne's Ports."
ROBERT HAYDEN, "Monet's 'Waterlilies.'"
CATHY SONG, "Girl Powdering Her Neck."
MAY SWENSON, "The Tall Figures of Giacometti."
KEVIN YOUNG, "The Fun Gallery."
