Please read the handout “Writing the Explication” before you begin this assignment.
For your explication, you will choose ONE of the following poems from The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry. Those are:
– Mark Strand’s “The Story of Our Lives”
– Robert Pinsky’s “The Hearts,”
– Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke With You,”
– Galway Kinnel’s “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,”
– J.V. Cunningham’s “To My Wife,”
– Theodore Roethke’s “I Knew a Woman.”
– “Sunflower Sutra” by Allen Ginsberg,
– “Drops in the Bucket,” by Kay Ryan,
– “The Typewriter’s the Kind” by Heather McHugh,
– “My Father’s Back” by Edward Hirsch,
– “For An Album” by Adrienne Rich,
– “Next Day” by Randall Jarrell,
– “Onions” by William Matthews
– “It is This Way With Men,” by C. K. Williams
Your paper should be five paragraphs in length (three full pages plus a Works Cited), and it should include a clear thesis (argument) about the poem in question. Remember that your paper is an ANALYSIS of the poem and should do more than just summarize the lines of the poem.
Some topics for your paper may include:
? How does the language and/or structure of the poem lend itself to the listener’s understanding of the poem?
? How does the imagery of the poem contribute to or detract from the speaker’s success in telling a cohesive story?
? What does the poem seem to be about and how does this meaning reveal itself over the course of the poem?
? How (or how well/poorly) does the foreground of the poem (the story, or what is happening in the poem) reveal to the listener what might be happening in the background (the message) of the poem?
*If you need a copy of the poem, please email me and I will scan it and send it to you*
