For this assignment, you will write an explication of the poem you have been working with from  Parts II, III, or IV of Li-Young Lee’s The City in Which I Love You.  Essentially, this will take the ideas you generated while doing your paraphrase of the poem and your analysis of poetic language in the poem and combine and revise those into essay form.

What Is an Explication?

An explication is a particular type of way of writing about poetry in which you go line by line or stanza by stanza through the poem, explaining its meaning as you go.  You typically begin with the denotative meaning of each line, then explain its connotations and some of its distinguishing poetic features.  For tips on how to write an explication, including a short sample student essay, see the Univ. of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Writing Center page (链接到外部网站。).

Requirements

Use MLA format, citing line numbers instead of the page number in parentheses when you quote.  Fill at least two pages, typed, double spaced.  If you go a little over, that’s fine. While this assignment counts in the Homework category and not the Major Assignments category, it is worth significantly more points than a typical homework assignment, so you should take extra care to compose your ideas well.