Vendler's Explication of Poetry
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Additional Step-by-Step Method of Thoroughly Explicating a Poem
In addition to the sections, which are mentioned in the basic explication de texte, please review these divisions to further assist you in the complex work of analysis. Meaning: can you paraphrase in prose the general outline of the poem? Do not simply answer yes or no; attempt a brief paraphrase.
Antecedent scenario: What has been happening before the poem begins? What has provoked the speaker?
"Poets make certain stanza-forms their own. Dante wrote the whole of the Divine Comedy in three-line pentameter stanzas with interlaced rhyme, and ever since, anyone writing in this form or one of its modern adaptations—from Percy Bysshe Shelley in the nineteenth century through Wallace Stevens and Seamus Heaney in the twentieth century—evokes Dante" (Vendler 74). 1. How does the information contained in this statement aid us in our interpretation of poetry? What does it tell us into utterance? How has a previous equilibrium been unsettled? What is the speaker upset6 about? 2. Division into parts: How many? Where do the breaks come? 3. The climax: How do the other parts fall into place around it? 4. The other parts: What makes you divide the poem into these parts? Are there changes in person? In agency? In tense? In parts of speech? Look for any and all dynamic changes within the poem, rather than consider that the poem is a static structure. 5. Find the skeleton: What is the emotional curve on which the whole poem is strung? (It even helps to draw a shape—a crescendo, perhaps, or an hourglass-shape, or a sharp ascent followed by a steep decline—so you will know how the poem looks to you as a whole.) 6. Games with the skeleton: How is this emotional curve made new? 7. Language: What are the contexts of diction; chains of significant relation; parts of speech emphasized; tenses; and so on? 8. Tone: Can you name the pieces of the emotional curve—the changes in
Additional Step-by-Step Method of Thoroughly Explicating a Poem
In addition to the sections, which are mentioned in the basic explication de texte, please review these divisions to further assist you in the complex work of analysis. Meaning: can you paraphrase in prose the general outline of the poem? Do not simply answer yes or no; attempt a brief paraphrase.
Antecedent scenario: What has been happening before the poem begins? What has provoked the speaker?
"Poets make certain stanza-forms their own. Dante wrote the whole of the Divine Comedy in three-line pentameter stanzas with interlaced rhyme, and ever since, anyone writing in this form or one of its modern adaptations—from Percy Bysshe Shelley in the nineteenth century through Wallace Stevens and Seamus Heaney in the twentieth century—evokes Dante" (Vendler 74). 1. How does the information contained in this statement aid us in our interpretation of poetry? What does it tell us into utterance? How has a previous equilibrium been unsettled? What is the speaker upset6 about? 2. Division into parts: How many? Where do the breaks come? 3. The climax: How do the other parts fall into place around it? 4. The other parts: What makes you divide the poem into these parts? Are there changes in person? In agency? In tense? In parts of speech? Look for any and all dynamic changes within the poem, rather than consider that the poem is a static structure. 5. Find the skeleton: What is the emotional curve on which the whole poem is strung? (It even helps to draw a shape—a crescendo, perhaps, or an hourglass-shape, or a sharp ascent followed by a steep decline—so you will know how the poem looks to you as a whole.) 6. Games with the skeleton: How is this emotional curve made new? 7. Language: What are the contexts of diction; chains of significant relation; parts of speech emphasized; tenses; and so on? 8. Tone: Can you name the pieces of the emotional curve—the changes in