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Clarifying passage

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A passage within a poem that clarifies earlier ambiguity, resolves metaphorical tension, or provides interpretive guidance.

Detailed Definition
A clarifying passage is a section within a poem—often near its conclusion—that explicates earlier ambiguity, resolves thematic tension, or offers interpretive insight; in Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the final lines (“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”) serve this function by distilling the poem’s philosophical meditation into an aphoristic statement.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats clarifies his longing: “Now more than ever seems it rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with no pain”; Frost’s “Stopping by Woods” concludes with a clarifying refrain: “And miles to go before I sleep”; Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” explains immortality through narrative progression; Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” clarifies poetic legacy in its final stanza
Additional Notes
Clarifying passage provides interpretive guidance within a poem—often appears after ambiguity or complexity; should emerge organically from imagery or voice rather than as exposition.
Also Known As
Explanatory coda interpretive stanza elucidating verse thematic clarification Clarifying stanza Interpretive lines
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