Choose ONE of these poems you feel you can best explicate. Click on the attachment with the SAMPLE EXPLICATION of “Desert Places.” Use this for your model. Your EXPLICATION should be organized like this:

Paragraph #1: A discussion of the title of the poem and its general meaning.
Paragraph #2: A discussion of the FORM of the poem (does it have a pattern [rhyme scheme, set number of lines/stanza] or no pattern [free verse]. Describe the form of the poem.
Paragraph #3: (This is optional.) Does the poem have a movement (in time, in space). If so, describe it.
Paragraphs #4. . . . The number of paragraphs from here on will depend on which poem you choose. You should include a paragraph for each stanza in the poem. How long those paragraphs are will depend on how many stanzas (and how long) the poem you choose has. (Desert Places has 4, so I wrote 4 paragraphs).

POEMS FOR EXPLICATION

Acquainted With the Night by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right
I have been one acquainted with the night.

My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother’s countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers by Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.