Explications

What is an Explication?

An explication is an explanation of what an author says and means as well as how he or she gets across the meaning and emotional impact of his or her work. When you explicate, you don't summarize, you explain -- pointing out what clues and techniques the author creatively uses to get across his/her meaning.

A good explication looks at individual lines and passages, pointing out how they work together like threads in a cloth to create a whole fabric.

To explicate a poem, you must apply the MRS or Multiple Reading Strategy. Read the poem the first time just to check your own emotional reaction. How does the poem make you feel? If your answer is "Confused," go back and look up any vocabulary you did not understand. Of course, you can also do a Google search if a computer is available, but you'll find it more rewarding to do the detective work of an explication on your own. It's cool to discover that poetry is understandable. Have faith in yourself. You figure out the meanings of songs every day, don't you?
Look for symbols.
Apply the 5W + H formula: Who is speaking? Who or what is the poem about? What happens? Where? When? Why? How?

Click here to view a bad explication and a good explication of a quote from a poem.

Click here to view a good explication of an entire poem.

Click here to access a symbolism dictionary.

Click here to access a key for finding and understanding symbols.

Note: When you quote more than one line of a poem, show the line separation with a slash. Example: The poem "Song of the Sky Loom" shows that the sun is like a weaver in the following lines: "May the warp be the white light of morning, /May the weft be the red light of evening."