explicating the poem. Think of “explicating” as “explaining + picking apart.”
Paper details
Write an essay about Elizabeth Bishop’s, “One Art’ explicating the poem. Think of “explicating” as “explaining + picking apart.” Your explication should advance a general reading that explains what the poem is about (meaning; plot, if there is one; theme), as well as a specific, piece-by-piece analysis of how you get to that meaning, by way of close reading (pay attention to things like form, diction, connotation and denotation, sound, imagery, symbolism, simile and metaphor. rhythm, rhyme, allusion. etc.). Your essay should explicate and focus on a specific section of it for explication. Each body paragraph should have a topic sentence that illuminates exactly what the purpose is for that paragraph. Your essays should conclude by addressing some type of’s° what?’ question. Why does this reading matter? What can we learn from this? How does this reading affect us or make us realize something interesting or new about ourselves, as illuminated by the new approach to the poem? Essays should be a minimum of 1200 words. Be sure that you include adequate support for your reading in the form of quotations from your poem. You can cite your source (the poem) by including the line numbers, not the page number, in parentheses, since it will be obvious from what source you are citing. Capitalization and punctuation should be presented as they are in the original poem, and line breaks should be indicated with a slash. Here is an example from Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” a marvelous poem that can be found in Chapter 22: °And though /We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are° (65-67). For quotes longer than five lines, you should use the long quotation format. Be aware, though, that long quotations are often downfalls in student papers, commonly used to fill up space and avoid actual explication of the lines being quoted. You are probably much better off sticking with quotations of only a few lines, if not a few words, at a time. Essays should be thoroughly checked for grammar, punctuation, and spelling, and they should be formatted according to MLA conventions. This means that papers should include your name, the due date, the course name, and the instructor’s name in the top left of the first page. Essays should include a unique title (i.e. not just °Essay #2° or the title of the poem), and they should be in Times New Roman 12-point font. Margins of 1″ or 1.5° should be on all sides, and each page should feature appropriate page-numbering. Remember that titles of poems are placed in quotations, not underlined or italicized, in MLA style.
Using the book BackPack Literature by X.J Kennedy and Dana Gioia, the Poem is on page 566 in chapter 22 Please make a Work Cited page typed in MLA Format
