Provide an explication of Louise Bogan’s “Medusa.” For tips on poetic explication, refer to the chapter “Writing About a Poem.”
For me an explication has some specific elements to it. I look for a paraphrase of the poem in our own words, followed by an analysis of what the poem means by identifying and explaining some of the key features of the poem like tone, imagery, metaphor, personification, etc.
Medusa
BY LOUISE BOGAN
I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved,a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.
When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.
This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.
The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.
And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.
