Exercises
Directions: For the following poems create ana analysis paragraph that "close reads" excerpts from the poem for their interesting uses of poetic devices.
Here are the poetic devices to choose from: (F.I.C.T.S.S.)
Figurative Language:
metaphor
simile
verbal irony: hyperbole, understatement
dramatic irony
allusion
Imagery
Connotations
Tone Shifts
Sound Devices: alliteration, assonance, euphony, cacophony
Scansion: meter, trochee, spondee
You need a minimum of three devices in your analysis paragraph. Use the starters for help.
Remember:
Topic Sentence
Linking Sentence
Introduction to the Passage
Context
Condense
Close Read
Connect to Topic Sentence
1. Poem:
The Young Housewife
At ten A.M. the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband's house.
I pass solitary in my car.
Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
Controlling purpose / thesis of analytical essay:
In his poem "The Young Housewife" William Carlos Williams contemplates an affair with an imagined, young housewife, but he rejects this imaginative infidelity and is pleased both with his ethical behavior and his imaginative vision.
Topic Sentence: .By comparing the young housewife to a fallen leaf and then running it over, Williams's speaker has visually discarded acting upon his lustful desires for the woman.
Quotation (concrete detail):
I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
(lines 8-12)
2. Little Exercise
Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep
listen to it growling.
Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys
lying out there unresponsive to the lightning
in dark, coarse-fibred families,
where occasionally a heron may undo his head,
shake up his feathers, make an uncertain comment
when the surrounding water shines.
Think of the boulevard and the little palm trees
all stuck in rows, suddenly revealed
as fistfuls of limp fish-skeletons.
It is raining there. The boulevard
and its broken sidewalks with weeds in every crack
are relieved to be wet, the sea to be refreshened.
Now the storm goes away again in a series
of small, badly lit battle-scenes,
each in "another part of the field."
Think of someone sleeping in a row-boat
tied to a mangrove root or the pile of a bridge;
think of him as uninjured, barely disturbed.
-Elizabeth Bishop
Controlling purpose / thesis of analytical essay:
In her poem "Little Exercise" Elizabeth Bishop encourages a young "listener" to "think" of the storm in ways that will assuage the listerner's fear.
Topic Sentence: .By asking the young listener to think of the storm as a dog, Bishop has created a simile that domesticates the storm and tempers its ferocity.
Quotation (concrete detail):
Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep
listen to it growling.
(lines 1-3)
3.
Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.
Message:
imagery: (visual): shattered water ; (auditory): misty din
connotations: "shattered" "din"
personification: "Great waves looked over others coming in"
simile: The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
irony / understatement: There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God's last Put out the Light was spoken.
------------------------------------------------
alliteration: "water, waves" "made misty" "being backed" "cliff continent"
allusion: "Put out the light" of Othello and "Let there be light" of Genesis
rhyme scheme: ironic heroic couplets?
tone shift : lines 1-9 and 10-14
Possible Answers:
1. Poem:
The Young Housewife
Controlling purpose / thesis of analytical essay:
In his poem "The Young Housewife" William Carlos Williams contemplates an affair with an imagined, young housewife, but he rejects this imaginative infidelity and is pleased both with his ethical behavior and his imaginative vision.
Topic Sentence: .By comparing the young housewife to a fallen leaf and then running it over, Williams's speaker has visually discarded acting upon his lustful desires for the woman.
Quotation (concrete detail):
I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
(lines 8-12)
By comparing the young housewife to a fallen leaf and then running it over, Williams's speaker has visually discarded acting upon his lustful desires for the woman. (Topic Sentence) William Carlos Williams is known for his simple images and honesty in his poetry. In this poem the passing thought of an attractive, young housewife who is bored at home captures Williams's imagination. (Linking sentences) After describing the housewife Williams compares her to a fallen leaf by writing:
I compare her
to a fallen leaf.
The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.
(lines 8-12).
)
Williams describes the housewife as "shy," "uncorested" as she calls the "ice-man" and "fish-man" in the lines leading up to the above quote. (context) The paradoxical shyness and looseness suggsted by her "stray ends of hair" and "uncorseted" "negligee" allow us to infer that the speaker is contemplating an affair with this woman. (condense) Stangely calling attention to his making of a metaphor, the speaker compares the woman to a fallen leaf. Well, a fallen leaf is dead, dried, colorless, and lifeless. The connotations of "fallen" also include falling from prelapsarian Eden and our state of purity as humans in the Garden of Eden. So, the speaker runs over this "fallen leaf" among other leaves and lets the imaginative affair pass without action. Presumably, he does this for all sorts of moral, marital, and lawful reasons but also because the metaphor to a "fallen leaf" suggests that she is far more enticing in a dream than in reality. (close read and connection to thesis)
8. Little Exercise
Controlling purpose / thesis of analytical essay:
In her poem "Little Exercise" Elizabeth Bishop encourages a young "listener" to "think" of the storm in ways that will assuage the listerner's fear.
Topic Sentence: By asking the young listener to think of the storm as a dog, Bishop has created a simile that domesticates the storm and tempers its ferocity.
Quotation (concrete detail):
Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily
like a dog looking for a place to sleep
listen to it growling.
(lines 1-3)
By asking the young listener to think of the storm as a dog, ElizabethBishop has created a simile that domesticates the storm and tempers its ferocity. (Topic Sentence) One thinks of this poem as an older person speaking to a younger person about the coming storm. With hopes of assuaging the young person's fear of the storm, the speaker walks the young person through a series of "little exercises" of the imagination in order for the child to see the storm as unthreatening. (Linking sentences) In the opening lines of her poem "Little Exercise" Bishop compares the storm to a harmless dog settling in for a nap. Bishop writes, "Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily / like a dog looking for a place to sleep / listen to it growling." (lines 1-3) (Intro to Quote and Concrete Detail) As the opening lines of the poem, we are commanded to think imaginatively and metaphorically about the storm. This imaginative urging does not stop until the last line of the poem. (context and condense) As a simile, the tenor, the storm, is domesticated by the vehicle, the dog looking for a place to sleep. The way dogs roam around in circles, sniffing out good spots, and working the ground to create a bed in which to rest is similar to the way in which the storm roams the sky, (seemingly) ponders where to go next, and improves the ground with its rain. It is impossible to find this dog as threatening as it searches for a place to rest and, cosequently, it is impossible to find the storm as threatening. Bishop's little exercise" has worked on the first atttempt. (close read and connection to thesis)