How to Write a Critical Essay About Poetry
From American Negro Poetry: An Anthology by Arna Wendell Bontemps.
The Voyage of Jimmy Poo
A soapship went a-rocking
Upon a bathtub sea.
The sailor crouched a-smiling
Upon a dimpled knee.
Young Neptune dashed the waters
Against enamel shore,
And kept the air a-tumbling
With bubble-clouds galore.
But soon the voyage ended.
The ship was swept away
By a hand that seemed to shisper
"There'll be no more games today."
The ship lay dry and and stranded
On a shiny metal tray,
And a voice was giving orders
That a sailor must obey.
Oh captain, little captain,
Make room for just one more
The next time you go sailing
Beyond enamel shore.
The Longing for Childhood in "The Voyage of Jimmy Poo"
In "The Voyage of Jimmy Poo," James A. Emanuel writes a seemingly simple poem about a small boy taking a bath. He is presented as the sea-god of his bathtub controlling the fate of a "soapship" &endash; a bar of soap sailing on the seas of the bathwater. His playful game stops when one parent puts an end to the bath and leaves the soap "stranded" on a metal tray. The poem ends with an enigmatic last stanza that asks the boy to "make room for just one more" in his bathtub ocean. This stanza holds the key to the poem in that it gives voice to the longing of this particular adult and of all adults to return to the world of imagination that is childhood. Emanuel conveys this message by using clever imagery, appropriate musical devices, and figurative language that connects the adult world to the world of children.
Emanuel uses clever imagery to transform a bathtub into an ocean. In the first stanza, for instance, he calls a bar of soap a "soapship" that rocks in a "bathtub sea." He creates a portmanteau word to join the double worlds of a child's bathtub and a vast ocean out of which rises the island of a "dimpled knee." He furthers this extended metaphor when in the second stanza he refers to the "enamel shore" of the bathtub and the "bubble-clouds" that form from the soap bubbles. In the fourth stanza the "ship" of soap lies "dry and stranded/On a shiny metal tray," just as a real ship might lie grounded on a sandbar. The imagery also extends to the young boy who is referred to as a "Young Neptune" sea-god of the bathtub, a "sailor" and a "captain" &endash; all titles that the young boy has bestowed upon himself through his imagination. The final interesting image that Emanuel uses is a minimalist one. He reduces the parent who ends the bath to "a hand" which probably pulls the plug on the drain and ends the child's journey of the mind. By reducing the parent to just one part, Emanuel is showing us how a child views his parent &endash; as a force that ends childish dreaming and offers a hand to pull him up toward adulthood. It also conjures up the punishment that that hand can inflict, but because this poem is generally light in tone, Emanuel most likely intends the first interpretation.
The author also uses appropriate musical devices to create this world of imagination. In stanza 1, for instance, we find alliteration with the repetition of the "s" sound in "soapship," "sea," "sailor," and "a-smiling." The soft "s" sound is evocative of the gentleness of the bathtub sea, of the sloshing around of the water, and is repeated throughout the poem. In addition, the rhythm of the poem is sing-songy with alternating seven- and six-syllable lines with the second and fourth lines of each stanza ending in a perfect rhyme. The rhythm is that of a children's song which in one real sense this poem is.
Still, this poem is much more than a children's song, as evidenced also by the figurative language. The allusion to the child as a "Young Neptune," the god of the oceans, and the metaphors comparing the child to a "captain" and a "sailor" all call to mind the adventure of the open seas. When adults use their imaginations and think of escape, they sometimes think of sailing to some south-sea island on a 40-foot yacht. The adult in this poem (we're never told if it's the mother or father) not only suggests that the childhood world of imagination is a nice place for the child, but asks that he or she be invited along for the next ride when "you go sailing/Beyond the enamel shore." The metaphors and allusions, therefore, also work well toward building the central message of this poem.
And what is that message? Clearly that this one adult longs for the care-free imaginative life that he or she left behind as a child and that his or her child now possesses. The author of this poem communicates this message through images, musical devices, and figurative language which all combine to transform the bathtub into an open ocean. Still, one ultimately gets the sense that the adult will never be able to join in that voyage, and, as a result, there is a certain sadness to the poem as well as a care-free lightheartedness. The fourth stanza, especially, with its image of the ship "dry and stranded" and the voice "giving orders that a sailor must obey," show the intrusion of the real world into the make-believe world of childhood. Just as the child sees the hand intruding into his world to pull the plug on his imagination, so too does the parent hear the message of the hand that "whispers/'There'll be no more games today.'" In this way, too, does the poem deal with what it means to grow from a child into an adult and the realization that one can never truly go back.
1. Make sure you have a title that means something. Underline it.
2. Mention the poem's title and author of the poem in ¶1
3. Generally paraphrase the "story of the poem" in ¶1. Even deceptively simple poems have a story line.
4. Make sure your thesis (the bold sentence in ¶1) makes a statement that you intend to prove. Remember the goal of a thesis &endash; to make clear what may be obscure to the unskilled reader.
5. Follow your thesis immediately with your topic summary (the italicized sentence).
6. Begin each body paragraph with a topic sentence following the order of your topic summary.
Make sure your topic sentence makes an assertion that demands proof.
7. In your body paragraph, prove your topic sentence assertion by using the words of the poem. Quote them according to the style I use here.
8. If possible, try to use a transitional phrase or sentence to connect the body paragraphs as I've done here in both ¶s 3&4.
9. In your conclusion, summarize your three topics. Then synthesize: In other words, come up with a fourth topic, a brand new topic that you haven't yet discussed, that stems from or is a natural extension of your three topics. I consider this the most important part of an essay.