Poetry Paper Assignment

Poetry Paper Due by 11:55 p.m. CST, Saturday, April 10, 2021

Worth 100 points

Documentation Style: MLA (for both format and citation)

Length: 2000+ words (PLUS Work Cited page)

Shorter papers will not earn high grades. Papers will not be penalized just for going over the word limit.

If you have problems with grammar, mechanics, and/or format in your work in general, PLEASE get help via the Student Success Center (BE 103). These kinds of errors will cost you much, much more on this assignment, as will failing to follow my directions about the nature of the assignment.

This is an English class, and I expect your paper to adhere to the rules of standard edited English.

►Read these supplementary documents on writing about poetry:

●How to Quote Poetry in a Paper (different rules from drama!)

●How to Explicate a Poem ●Sample Poetry Explication

►Your job is to explicate a poem to make a cogent statement about the poem’s theme. Choose one of the following poems for your assignment:

Cathy Song’s “Stamp Collecting”

Julia Alvarez’s “Bilingual Sestina”

Judith Ortiz Cofer’s "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica"

Dana Gioia’s “Planting a Sequoia”

Ted Kooser’s “Abandoned Farmhouse”

You may NOT explicate any other poem. If you do, you will receive NO CREDIT.

►Do a thorough explication. Follow the rules of explication as I’ve outlined them in the handout on Moodle. DON'T skip around and/or cherry pick from the poem. Your thesis should make clear the theme. You will lose points if you don’t follow the rules of explication.

►Use NO outside sources. It's just you and the poem. Don’t even consult any web pages about your poem. I WILL CHECK your work, as well submit to a plagiarism site, and I WILL SPOT anything from an outside source.

►Attach a work cited page. The title of a poem is treated the same way as the title of a short story or an essay (in quotation marks rather than italicized). The entry for the poem should list the poet and the poem, along with all pertinent information.

►Write your papers using the MLA format: both style sheet and documentation. In addition to the information on MLA style and documentation on Moodle, you should consult as needed a scholarly website that features this information or an up-to-date handbook. Failure to follow instructions about paper format, citation, and documentation will cost you AT LEAST ONE LETTER GRADE of your assignment grade. If the citation/documentation offense is serious enough, you could receive a ZERO for the work and find yourself before the Student Conduct Board, facing charges of plagiarism.

►Type your papers using the following:

►Times New Roman 12 pitch font (nothing larger or smaller than this size)

►one inch margins

►double-spacing

►Submit your electronic paper via Moodle by 11:55 p.m. CST, Saturday, April 10, 2021.

►Submit the electronic version of the work in one of these formats:

MS Word .RTF ASCII Open Office

Do NOT submit an assignment in MS Works, .PDF, or WordPerfect.

Remember that I have Word 2010, so your file must be compatible. If I can’t open/read it, I can’t grade it!

►Yes, I will submit all papers to an anti-plagiarism site before I grade them.

►Be sure to label your files clearly so I know who you are:

Example: Morris_Cleatta_poetry_paper

Use YOUR name when you name your electronic file.