Term Paper on "Auto Wreck by Karl Shapiro"

Quoted Instructions for "Auto Wreck by Karl Shapiro" Assignment:

1. An interpretation of: "Auto Wreck" by Karl Shapiro

2. Three full pages typed.

3. Look at the structure, the dramatic situation, the poetic devices used to convey the message to the reader. Notice the tone and word choices. Follow the pattern for analysis and remember that your opinion must be supported by evidence in the poem.

4. Before starting your paper, reread the student explication for "Digging". (I have included this example after the Poetry Terms List)

Your paper must:

a. Follow MLA Format;

b. Use Times New Roman 12 and be double spaced;

c. Be saved as a Word Document (not WordPerfect);

d. Be dropped in the digital drop box by the specified time. Due August 8th by 11:59pm

I've included our Poetry Terms List

Abstract diction: words which express concepts or ideas

Allegory: a work in which the characters, events, setting, etc. have symbolic meaning

Alliteration: repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning of successive words

Allusion: an indirect reference to any person, place, or thing--fictitious, historical, or actual

Assonance: repetition of the same vowel sound

Blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter (iambic unstressed stressed)

Cacophony: when the sound of words in a poem create a harsh, discordant effect

Caesura: an obvious pause in a line of poetry

Closed form: poem which follows some sort of pattern

Concrete diction: words which refer to what we can immediately perceive with

one of the senses

Connotation: overtones or suggestions of additional meaning that a word gains from the contexts in which it has been used in the past

Couplet: two-lined stanzas, usually rhymed

Denotation: a meaning of a word as defined in the dictionary

Diction: choice of words

Didactic poetry: poetry written to state a message or teach a body of knowledge

End-stopped line: the line has a pause, however brief, at the end of a line

Euphony: when the sounds of the words in a poem work together with

meaning to please the mind and ear

Figures of speech: figurative language; a figure of speech may be said to occur

whenever a speaker or ***** departs from the usual denotations of words (simile, metaphor, personification, overstatement (hyperbole), understatement, metonymy, and synecdoche)

Heroic couplet: two rhymed lines of iambic pentameter

Hyperbole: (overstatement): exaggeration made for effect

Imagery: a word or sequence of words that refers to any sensory experience (visual, auditory, olfactory, taste, and tactile imagery)

Irony: a manner of speaking that implies a discrepancy

Metaphor: a statement that one thing is something else, which in a literal sense, it is not

Metonymy: the name of a thing is substituted for that of another closely associated with it (example from your text)

A little rule, a little sway,

A sun beam on a winter's day,

Is all the proud and mighty have

Between the cradle and grave.

Cradle equals birth and grave equals death.

Onomatopoeia: an attempt to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates the sounds associated with it (zoom, whiz, bang, pitter-patter, buzz)

Open form: poem does not follow a set pattern

Persona: the speaker of a poem; not necessarily the poet

Personification: a figure of speech in which a thing, an animal, or an abstract term is made human

Rhythm: the recurrence of stresses and pauses in a poem

Rhyme scheme: the order in which the rhymed words occur

Run-on line: line does not end in punctuation

Satiric poetry: a kind of comic poetry that generally conveys a message; usually the poet uses humor in the form of hyperbole to bring about social change

Simile: a comparison of two things indicated by some connective, usually like, as, or than

Stanza: group of lines whose

An poetry explication example:

Sample of a Student’s Explication of Seamus Heaney’s "Digging"

Among all possible human relationships, few are more complex than that which exists between father and son. Throughout the course of such a relationship, many conflicts are certain to arise which place sire and offspring at odds with one another. Quite often, the failure of the son to "follow in the footsteps" of his father causes the deepest of divisions between the two and frequently severs the bonds of love which exist between them. In his work, "Digging", poet Seamus Heaney comments upon a young man’s relationship with his father and grandfather and touches upon just such a conflict. Unlike many relationships, however, Heaney’s poem reveals not a severing of bonds with his progenitors, but a strengthening of them instead.

Heaney uses the first person point of view as evidenced by the word "my" in the first stanza. Regional references, like Toner’s Bog, lead the reader to believe that the poem is set in Ireland. The first stanza displays a somewhat forced rhyme scheme of A,A,B,B,B; however, the scheme completely breaks down and blank verse prevails through the remainder of the work. Heaney begins the poem by using a simile to describe the pen which rests comfortable in his hand "snug as a gun". This simile serves as an allusion to the path which the speaker has chosen in life, that of the *****, and of the tool of his trade, the pen. The stanza continues with a description of the sounds occurring below his window as his father digs in the flowerbeds. Using decidedly assonant terms such as "thumb", "snug", and "gun", as well as the alliteration in "gravelly ground", Heaney sets a rather masculine tone through his choice of gruff sound words. As if beginning to daydream, the narrator looks down upon the scene and begins to recollect.

As the young man contemplates his father’s labored "straining rump among the flowerbeds", he uses a metaphor to transport the reader back in time as his father "comes up twenty years away". Recalling a time when his father labored in the Irish potato fields rather than in flowerbeds, the speaker describes the physical toil which characterized his father’s "chosen path". The description of his father’s labors in the third stanza takes on a masculine strength, yet gentle tone. The narrator looks back fondly upon times when he apparently assisted his father in the potato fields, noting his love for the "cool hardness" of the harvesting of new potatoes hidden in the ground. The descriptive images of a "coarse" boot "nestled" on the lug, the "shaft" of the shovel "levered firmly" against the "inside knee", and the "bright edge" of the heavy shovel all serve to paint a picture of a laborer comfortable with the tool of his trade. The son’s admiration for his father’s labor is evident in the brief fourth stanza as he lovingly notes "By god, the old man could handle a spade." This reverence, however, triggers an even earlier recollection of his grandfather.

Now the young man boasts of his grandfather’s ability to "cut more turf in a day than any other man on Toner’s Bog." Like the narrator’s father, the grandfather deftly uses the shovel to uncover "the good turf", hidden, like the father’s potatoes, under the ground. To describe the rhythmic action needed in the peat cutting process, Heaney uses a combination of assonance and consonance as in the phrase "nicking and slicing neatly". The assonance of the long "o" sounds, the alliteration of the "s" sounds, and the imagery created by appealing to the senses of smell and hearing combine in the sixth stanza as recollections of the father and grandfather mingle in the "the cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap of soggy peat"; these memories awaken the speaker to those "living roots" so entrenched in the physical labor of digging. The reference to "roots" is an allusion to his family heritage and the adjective "living" refers to his father and himself as the two current generations. The speaker ends the sixth stanza with the lament that he has "no spade to follow men like them", who labored so diligently to uncover that which is hidden in the ground.

In closing, the narrator repeats the opening description of the pen and states confidently, "I’ll dig with it," ostensibly comparing the tool of his trade, the pen, with those of his ancestors, the shovel. In contemplating his chosen career, the young man seems to reach an inward peace; while he did not "follow in the footsteps of his fathers", he digs nonetheless—not in the ground, but in the mind to uncover hidden truths. The reader is left with the feeling that this man’s ancestors would be proud.