I really really need help with this one, i can not find anything one this poem, besides the actual poem! I need to analyze it section by section, and i'm no good at this please help!


Poem:

The Leap
James Dickey

The only thing I have of Jane MacNaughton
Is one instant of a dancing-class dance.
She was the fastest runner in the seventh grade,
My scrapbook says even when boys were beginning
To be as big as the girls
But I do not have her running in my mind,
Though Frances Lane is there, Agnes Fraser,
Fat Betty Lou Black in the boys-against-girls
Relays we ran at recess: she must have run

Like the other girls, with her skirts tucked up
So they would be like bloomers,
But I cannot tell; that part of her is gone.
What I do have is when she came,
With the hem of her skirt where it should be
For a young lady, into the annual dance
Of the dancing class we all hated, and with a light
Grave leap, jumped up and touched the end
Of one of the paper-ring decorations

To see if she could reach it. She could,
And reached me now as well, hanging in my mind
From a brown chain of brittle paper, thin
And muscular, wide-mouthed, eager to prove
Whatever it proves when you leap
In a new dress, a new womanhood, among the boys
Whom you easily left in the dust
Of the passionless playground. If I said I saw
In the paper where Jane MacNaughton Hill,

Mother of four, leapt to her death from a window
Of a downtown hotel, and that her body crushed-in
The top of a parked taxi, and that I held
Without trembling a picture of her lying cradled
In that papery steel as though lying in the grass,
One shoe idly off, arms folded across her breast,
I would not believe myself. I would say
The convenient thing, that it was a bad dream
Of maturity, to see that eternal process

Most obsessively wrong with the world
Come out of her light, earth-spurning feet
Grown heavy: would say that in the dusty heels
Of the playground some boy who did not depend
On speed of foot, caught and betrayed her.
Jane, stay where you are in my first mind:
It was odd in that school, at that dance.
I and the other slow-footed yokels sat in corners
Cutting rings out of drawing paper

Before you leapt in your new dress
And touched the end of something I began,
Above the couples struggling on the floor,
New men and women clutching at each other
And prancing foolishly as bears: hold on
To that ring I made for you, Jane--
My feet are nailed to the ground
By dust I swallowed thirty years ago--
While I examine my hands.

Makoto, it's important that you have a clear idea of what the idea means to you, before taking it apart. Read it several times until you have one clear message the author is trying to send here. Having done that think of the poem in relation to these possible factors: (your teacher may have given you other aspects to consider also, these are just guidelines)


1. Language--formal or casual
2. Tone
3. Rhyme and meter (or lack of same)
4. Meaning
5. Overall effectiveness of the poem--(your opinion)


Les

Thank you, I'll try to reread it a couple of times, also if anyone can give me a couple websites that know how to analyze poems, that would be helpful too.

Makoto, learn how to use Google, it will save you lots of time in your research: [www.google.com] />

Les

i already used google,ask,yahoo,everything...thank you for your time, that's it thank you ^_^

Sometimes the internet does seem like a maze, Google is usually the shortest distance between you and the correct information.

Check out the ideas here, they may help with your assignment: [www.cliffsnotes.com] />

Les