The Poverty of a Woman who turned Herself Into Stone

By Lina Sagaral – Reyes

“Into stone.
This struggle
Has turned me
Into stone.”

She has no hands.

She is the folded hand.
A fist, frozen. Permafrost
Anger that cannot thaw into sorrow.

She has no eyes.

She is the blinded eye.
She is her own blinding dark.
At noon, her socket carries the night.

She is all ears.

Voices weigh her down.
She sinks into a swill of noises.
Silence is not always her own choice.

She wears a monochrome of gray.

Clowns, orphans, soldiers at war –
Their laughter has that stone –
Texture of gray.

Writing an Explication or a Simple Criticism of a Poem.

Explication goes beyond the assimilation required for a paraphrase and thus provides you with the opportunity to show your
understanding. There is no need, however, to explain everything in the poem. Complete, or total, explications would
theoretically require you to explain the meaning and implication of each word and every line – a technique that obviously
would be exhaustive.
A more manageable and desirable technique is general explication, which denotes attention to the meaning of individual parts
in relationship to the entire work. A general explication may be your explanation or “reading,”of the poem. You need to be
selective and to consider only those details which are significant in them and vital to your own thematic development.
Question for Discovering Ideas

What does the title contribute to the reader’s understanding?

Who is speaking? Where is the speaker when the poem is happening?
What is the situation? What has happened in the past, or what is happening in the present, that has brought about the speech?
What difficult, special, or unusual words does the poem contain? What references need explaining? How does an explication
assist in the understanding of the poem?
How does the poem develop? Is it a personal statement?
What is the main idea of the poem?

Strategies for Organizing Ideas

Your general explication must demonstrate your ability a) to follow the essential details of the poem (as in a paraphrase), b) to
understand the issues and the meaning which the poem reveals, c0 to explain some of the relationships of the content to
technique, and d0 to note and discuss especially important or unique aspects of the poem.

In your introduction, use your central idea to express a general view of the poem. The discussion of “Sampaguita
Song” suggests some possible central ideas, namely that (1) the poem highlights a conflict between life survival and surviving
the threats on the streets and (2) some young people are robbed of the joys of childhood because they need to earn a living.
In the body of your essay, first explain the poem’s content – not a paraphrase, but a description of the poem’s major organizing
elements. Hence, if the speaker of the poem is “inside” the poem as a first person involved“I,” you do not need to reproduce
this voice yourself in your description. Instead, describe the poem in your own words.
Next, explicate the poem in relation to you central idea. You choose your own order of discussion, depending on your topics.
You should, however, keep stressing you central idea with each new topic. Follow you description by discussing the poem’s
meaning or even by presenting two or more possible interpretations. You might also wish to refer to significant technique by
quoting phrases from the poem.

In your conclusion, you may repeat your major idea to reinforce your essay’s thematic structure. Because your essay is a
general explication, there will be parts of the poem that will not be discussed. But some other unusual words can be given brief
attention as further conclusion. In “Sampaguita Song,” for instance the references to the “gardens of childhood” and “the
essence of garden remains” creates a bond between the speaker and the sampaguita vendor.

Activity 2: A. Read the following steps in making a simple explication or literary criticism of
“The Poverty of the Woman Who Turned Herself into Stone”
In activity 1, you were asked to do some initial steps to understand the meaning and organization of the poem.

Your precious lessons on connotation and denotation, symbol, imagery, tone and diction, and figurative language will help you
better understand and appreciate poetry. They will also help you make better general explications and simple literary criticism.

Step 1: Look for tension, conflict, or opposition in a poem. The easiest way is to look at the opening lines and search for any
positive or negative images or impressions. You should have a strong hold of the poem. Once you get hold of the tension, you
see the large issue or central idea (theme) underlying the poem.

Step 2: Summarize the poem. Establish the central opposition. Set up the central idea.
Build your response in paragraph steps. Start with the summary to present a hold of the poem and to establish a central
tension. Write two or more sentences after the summary to show the overall argument. Draw attention to the observed. Then,
present the large issue based on the evidence presented.

Step 3: Look more closely at the opening lines of the poems, trying to see how the poet brings the theme to life.
Consider two or three details in the opening lines of the opening lines and try to see how the details relate to the central idea
or theme.

Step 4: Look at another section of the poem, trying to build analysis of the poem’s details.
Relate each detail back to the idea already established. Discuss how words and phrases, special topics and techniques bring the
idea to life.

Step 5: Keep moving through the details, but keep stressing your central idea with each new topic.
Discuss the meaning and two or more possible interpretations. You may quote phrases in the poem.

Step 6: See how the structure of the poem complements and helps define the subject matter of the poem.

Step 7: Add an overall sense of the “issues” in the poem at the end of each paragraph.

Step 8: Look at how the poem concludes and sum up the poem as a whole.
Repeat major ideas to give focus to your thematic structure. Unusual words in the poem may be given attention as further
conclusion.