Write a 2-3 page (double space) explication of your chosen sonnet with a clear thesis statement.
“A poetry explication is a relatively short analysis which describes the possible meanings and relationships of the words, images, and other small units that make up a poem.” (UNC Writing Lab)
You are examining the ‘how’ and the ‘what’. How all the parts of the poem work together to beautifully address or present some sort of theme or idea. Pay attention to structure, tone, word choice, imagery, rhetorical devices, etc. etc.
Sonnet 116:Let me not to the marriage of true mind
by William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.