Poetry Exercise: Instructions for Responding to the Poetry of Yeats' 'Middle' Period (1910-1928)


For Week Seven (Feb. 27 - March 2), you are asked to explicate two assigned poems by W. B. Yeats as an exercise in close reading, sometimes called explication. This 'middle' period of Yeats is one of much stylistic innovation and expansive vision as Yeats' poetry takes both more political and more personal turns. In a sense, Yeats moves on from the Celtic themes of his earlier work to focus more intently on contemporary concerns of Ireland, on war, on nationhood. He also continues to compose poems that treat of myth, mysticism, and the occult, sometime along pagan and at other times along Christian lines. His poems of this period are rich and complex and make for a challenging read.

Recognizing that reading Yeats can be difficult but immensely rewarding, this exercise asks you to work through (explicate) two poems you select by observing and identifying a number of their most prominent formal features of rhyme, meter, form/stanzaic structure, tone, imagery, syntax, sound pattern, symbolic language, figurative devices, etc. You are also to consider the poem's themes and argument as Yeats develops these in the poem.  Each of these responses should be about (and at most) a page in length; discussion of formal elements (the poem's organization and style) should be roughly equal to discussion of the poem's thematic elements (what the poem is about, what it means). How long should you spend on this? About 20-30 minutes for each; any longer and this becomes a more substantive act of criticism. Save that effort, if you wish, for the next paper.

Remember that neither response is meant to be a formal paper. You cannot say all that you might say about the poems, particularly the long poems. The objective here is to more deeply engage the text so that you may better understand it. See, then, what you can discover by using what you have learned about poetry in general to read Yeats. And remember, too, that this exercise does not require you to 'interpret' a poem and to justify that interpretation. This effort at explication is a more elemental one upon which interpretative readings can (and must) be based. What you are doing here, in essence, is making explicit your act of reading; think of these exercises as reading notes sufficiently tidy to share with others.

Note: You may turn in these two exercises together or separately on or before Thursday, March 2. You may choose any two of the fifteen poems I have assigned for the week.


Need help?  Forgotten more than you remember about poetry? Not sure you ever learned how to read a poem? Here are some links to material on poetry that can help you get started:

On explicating poetry (a really excellent overview): http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/blog/node/312

On scansion (of foot and meter) : http://aliscot.com/ensenanza/1302/scansion.htm
                                                     http://www.stedwards.edu/hum/klawitter/poetics/scansion.html

On poetic devices: http://cgreview.org/PoeticDevices.htm
                              http://homepage.smc.edu/meeks_christopher/OTHER%20DEVICES%20USED%20IN%20POETRY.htm
                              http://www.ans.edu.ni/Academics/Lupton_Rebecca/poetic%20glossary%5B1%5D.htm