Fares Kamar
English 11A – Leo
Crafting an Exegesis of a Lyric Poem: Prewriting
Typing directly into this document, respond thoughtfully and briefly to each of the following prompts.
1
Prompt
Read the poem aloud: what characteristics immediately strike your ear?
The poem starts off with a clear rhyme scheme as the first few lines actually sound a bit similar when you listen to them. But then as you read more of the poem, that rhyme scheme fades away as the lines don’t rhyme anymore. However, there are some slant rhymes in the middle. I feel that the effect this has on the readers is that it helps emphasize the mood the writer wants to convey and also helps with the meaning because she just starts listing things people do when a person dies,
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Death is something we cannot visualize/imagine but it gives of a certain mood. Numb also cannot be seen but it helps describe the feeling of the poem.
Explanation
Images are built of nouns. Nouns can be abstract and concrete. Look for and highlight the abstract and concrete nouns. The concrete nouns will tend to appeal to one of more of your five senses. To which senses does the poem appeal?
How do the abstract nouns function in the poem?
5
Prompt
Imagery can be literal or figurative. Does your poem contain any figurative language? If so, what is the effect of the figurative language?
The main aspect used repeatedly in my poem is personification. Emily Dickinson personifies the house through various examples. One of them being that it has a “numb” look. She also personifies the window as she says it opens “mechanically”. Another example of personification is when she states the word “it” when she describes the mattress and the person that died on it. There is also a lot irony in my poem. For example, Dickinson wrote “I use to when a boy” so we assume that the narrator is a guy when in fact it is a women. Another example would be when she states “dark parade” when talking about the funeral because a parade is usually cheerful and has a happy mood. The milliner is also ironic because a milliner designs
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Does your poem present a dominant rhythmic pattern? In what other ways does the poem reveal its rhythm? To what effect?
My poem has a incomplete rhyme/rhyme scheme as some parts rhyme, while others don’t. There are also some slants rhymes in between the stanzas. It is written in a ballad meter as the poem alternates between iambic tetrameter and iambic triameter, and some iambic pentameter. This specific scheme has a great effect on the poem because it creates a disruption and this disruption adds a lot of emphasis around the meaning the author is trying to portray.
Explanation
As you’re performing scansion to determine the rhythm of your poem, keep in mind these familiar terms: couplet, end-stopped line, enjambment, caesura, foot (iamb, trochee, spondee, anapest, dactyl), (monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, etc.), accentual meter, sprung rhythm, anaphora, and catalexis (adj. catalectic).
Again, the purpose is not to identify the rhythm, but to assess the effects of the poem’s