Concordia University Summer Storm by Dana Gioia Literature Analysis Please write a paper about 3 pages The class is literature. I uploaded all the outlines and requirements. I also uploaded an example Paper #2: Poetry Explication
A good poem is like a puzzle—the most fascinating part is studying the individual
pieces carefully and then putting them back together to see how beautifully the whole thing
fits together. A poem can have a number of different “pieces” that you need to look at
closely in order to complete the poetic “puzzle.” This sheet explains one way to attempt an
explication of a poem, by examining each “piece” of the poem separately. (An explication is
simply an explanation of how all the elements in a poem work together to achieve the total
meaning and effect.)
Include a title (often something clever based off of the poem) and a subtitle (often
“An explication of Poe’s ‘The Raven’”). Please include the works cited at the end, likely just
our textbook. Please use one of the poems from our book.
1.
Examine the situation in the poem. After reading the poem carefully, decide what
you think the poem is trying to say. What is its theme? Don’t just say “this poem is about X.”
Tell me what the poem is saying ABOUT X. So, for example, don’t say “this poem is about
springtime.” Rather, say something like “The speaker in this poem finds the renewed life of
springtime a painful reminder of her husband’s death.”
a. Does the poem tell a story? Is it a narrative poem? If so, what events
occur?
b. Does the poem express an emotion or describe a mood? Is it a lyric?
c. Poetic voice: Who is the speaker? Is the poet speaking to the reader
directly or is the poem told through a fictional persona? To whom is he
speaking? Can you trust the speaker?
d. Tone: What is the speaker’s attitude toward the subject of the poem?
What sort of tone of voice seems to be appropriate for reading the poem
out loud? What words, images, or ideas give you a clue to the tone?
2. Examine the structure of the poem:
a. Form: Look at the number of lines, their length, their arrangement on the
page. How does the form relate to the content? Is it a traditional form
(e.g., sonnet, villanelle) or “free form”? Why do you think the poet chose
that form for his poem?
b. Movement: How does the poem develop? Are the images and ideas
developed chronologically, by cause and effect, by free association? Does
the poem circle back to where it started, or is the movement from one
attitude to a different attitude (e.g., from despair to hope)?
c. Syntax: How many sentences are in the poem? Are the sentences simple
or complicated? Are the verbs in front of the nouns instead of in the usual
“noun, verb” order? Why?
d. Punctuation: What kind of punctuation is in the poem? Does the
punctuation always coincide with the end of the poetic line? If so, this is
called an end-stopped line. Is there any punctuation in the middle of a
line? Why do you think the poet would want you to pause halfway
through the line?
e. Title: What does the title mean? How does it relate to the poem itself?
3. Examine the language of the poem:
a. Diction or Word Choice: is the language colloquial, formal, simple,
unusual?
b. Do you know what all the words mean? If not, look them up.
c. What moods or attitudes are associated with words that stand out?
d. Allusions: Are there any allusions (references) to something outside the
poem, such as events or people from history, mythology, religion?
e. Imagery: Look for words that evoke one or more of the senses. What
associations do these images suggest?
f. Figurative Language: Look at metaphors, similes, analogies,
personification, symbols. How does this figurative language added to the
meaning of the poem or intensify its effect?
After looking at these literary techniques, decide which three or four of them you think
are MOST important in this poem. For example, you might choose 1) a central symbol; 2)
the form of the poem; 3) the figurative language, and 4) the pattern of dark imagery.
4. Examine the musical devices of the poem:
a. Rhyme scheme: Does the rhyme occur in a regular pattern, or irregularly?
Is the effect formal, satisfying, musical, funny, disconcerting?
b. Rhythm or Meter: in most languages, there is a pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables in a word or words in a sentence. In poetry, the
variation of stressed and unstressed syllables and words has a rhythmic
effect. What is the tonal effect of the rhythm here?
c. Other “sound effects”” alliteration, assonance, consonance repetition.
What tonal effect do they have here?
Summer Storm
by
Dana Gioia
We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.
We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.
The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.
To my surprise, you took my arm
A gesture you didn’t explain
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.
Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.
I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn’t speak another word
Except to say goodnight.
Why does that evening’s memory
Return with this night’s storm?
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm
There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won’t stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.
And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.
Comparison and Contrast 1647
also v samostudom ett
case a mental wall or symbolic sense of limits, is essen-Tuned disa
tial in the relationship.
Below the surface of any human being is the Fresh comparison
to a natural
potential to do harm, just as in the distance, on a clear
phenomenon.
day, a storm may be brewing. Though it is not the trust-
oing thing to do, both neighbors understand the necessity
of the wall in separating their properties and respecting
bintas
personal space. The narrator begins to question his Beginning of 200
faith in the wall and the distrust it perpetuates, but
conclusion.
in the end, as is evident by his repetition of the line
“Good fences make good neighbors,” he realizes the
truth in such a motto. For the symbolic protection it
affords and its ability to give some order to chaos, the
wall has become a part of their lives.
In Ireland, as in New England, the old stone walls
Conclusion refers
back to opening
remain, climbing to the tops of mountains and disap-
paragraph and
pearing over the ridge. They seem to hold the green sea Testates thesis
sentence.
of grasses down as a row of stones might hold down a
blanket on a breezy day. In the walls the neighbors find
a sense of control over their wild land, restraining the
endless landscape in manageable squares and rectangles,
keeping each neighbor’s overgrown field of nettles
within the walls and allowing responsibility to begin and
end with the stone borders. In a way the good relations
between neighbors are maintained with as much devo-
tion as the walls have been maintained over the years.
.
he negli
tinchim –
Jeszi afpet
COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
If you were to write about two works of literature in this anthology, you
would probably use the technique of comparison and contrast. When making
a comparison, you place the two works side by side and comment on their sim-
ilarities. When contrasting them, you point out their differences. It is always
more meaningful to compare and contrast two literary works that have some-
thing in common than two that are unrelated. As you work on your paper you
will find that if there are not important similarities between the two works,
your discussion will be as strained and pointless as an attempt to link closely
any two dissimilar objects, like elephants and oranges.
1646 Basic Types of Literary Papers
use
Beginning of
As a control over nature, the wall has many
analysis — ritual as
weaknesses. When nature does not work against the
a sense of control
over nature.
wall in New England, sending the frozen ground swell
under it,” hunters come through, leaving “not one stone
on a stone.” Each year in an annual ritual, the two neigh-
bors must meet again to repair the damage not because
they enjoy the endless process of rebuilding the wall,
but because the wall’s presence gives them some sense
of control over the chaos of nature. The wall divides the
wilderness into manageable segments that are far eas-
ier to maintain than an endless expanse of farmland.
In a visible and tangible way, the wall reminds the two
that, despite nature’s awesome power, they can in some,
though impermanent, way check that power.
The borders the wall forms also indicate where
Ritual as a statement
of the neighbors’
the responsibility of one person ends and the duty of
relationship
another begins. It is in this way that the wall crosses of quotations.
from control over nature to a controlling factor in the
neighbors’ relationship. Despite the fact that the wall
separates two plots of trees, and the “apple trees will
never get across and eat the cones under [the] pines,”
the wall is necessary in maintaining their friendly and
mutually beneficial relationship. As the neighbor states,
in the most memorable line of the poem, “Good fences
make good neighbors.” And in answer to the narrator’s
question of “Why do they make good neighbors?,” one
can look to the final image of the poem, a comparison
of the neighbor to “an old stone savage armed.”
In addition to illustrating the idea of ancient Analysis of poetic
property rights, this image turns the neighbor into a
imagery as it relates
threatening creature; revealing anything to him could
to the theme of the
prove dangerous. “He moves in darkness” –not the
poem.
darkness caused by the shade a tree casts on a sunny
day but a deeper darkness that holds the power to dam-
age emotions that the wall symbolically protects. There-
fore, the wall is a wise protection against a potentially
hostile invader. It is for this reason that a wall, in this
Analysis
after you’ve studied the poem. When one student tried freewriting about her
response to the poem, she was reminded of a photograph of Ireland on a travel
poster
. This memory inspired her opening paragraph in the following paper,
“Nature and Neighbors in Robert Frost’s ‘Mending Wall.””
SAMPLE PAPER
Nature and Neighbors
in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”
Ireland is known for its rolling green countryside. Funnel paragraph,
Without forests, the land appears to be a sea of green
narrows down to
stretching to a sea of blue. The land, however, is not
focus on assigned
topic of paper.
uninterrupted; there are a few roads and homes float-
ing in that green sea, and they are even further out-
numbered by Ireland’s stone walls. They streak across
every grazing field, surround the family farmhouses,
and never seem to be in need of repair. The reason
these walls remain has little to do with the skill of
their original builders. Years of maintenance keep
them strong. Why the walls are maintained, despite
the fact that few sheep graze within their boundaries,
can be explained by examining Robert Frost’s poem
“Mending Wall.”
The wall is in need of repair as the narrator and Summary of poem’s
subject.com
his neighbor meet to fill in the gaps a cold winter has
made. As the two walk along the wall at “spring mend-
ing time” one on each side, they replace the fallen stones
and rebuild the tumbled-down boundaries. As the stones
are restored to their places in the wall, the chaos of
nature is replaced by a man-made sense of order.
The neighbors “set the wall between (them) once
again,” and in doing so, they strengthen the order a year
of freedom has weakened. As they repair the wall, they Summary of poem’s
theme.
are restoring order to the natural world in which they
live and work and to their emotional worlds, where the
relationships they have with one another reside. In both
cases, the wall symbolizes the control the two men wish
to possess over unpredictable forces in their lives.
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