Visualizing Rhetorical Structure

Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.

I can remember when he was a pup.

-Robert Frost

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.I can remember when he was a pup.

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.I can remember when he was a pup.

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.

I can remember when he was a pup.

The real title is….

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.

I can remember when he was a pup.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fadeNor lose possession of that fair thou owest;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Look for two parts

The number of lines is each box is dispensed with. This juxtaposition hypothesizes that the sonnet is a kind of match between nature and art.

This leads to a discussion worth having, hinted at in this diagram:

What is the purpose of the flattery?How will the beloved feel when told

the speaker’s blazoning will last forever?

Surely the speaker means for the compliment to be felt—and returned.

Dividing a passage according to its meaning structure suggests a paragraph structure for an essay.

This is an imagist poem (remember “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams?

There are many avenues into the speaker-audience conversation in the following poem, through point of view, subject matter, tone, effect on audience.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound

Each of the following box diagrams express rhetorical choices, suggesting meaning or theme

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

Ezra Pound

Ah, now we can began an essay….

Ezra Pound’s two-line poem “In a Station of the Metro” functions as a dialogue between mystery and understanding.