English 1020 6

Weight: 20% of final grade

Objective: The beauty of poetry and its message or, for our purposes, theme, comes through the style of the poet. Each poet will utilize various literary elements to enrich their work. These elements then work together to help to elicit theme(s). Here are some examples of literary elements: sensory imagery, similes, metaphors, symbolism, personification, dialect, tone (tone can shift and change as the poem unfolds), irony, sound devices such as alliteration, consonance, assonance, and so forth.

First, let’s talk about selection:

Selection: You must choose from one of the poems discussed in class within the discussions: “Mother to Son,” “Facing It,” “Those Winter Sundays,” or “Happiness.”

Then, you should carefully read, re-read, and annotate or take notes on the poem in terms of what literary elements you feel are at play and how these elements enrich interpretation of various lines of the poem and ultimately, how they contribute to theme.

Select at least three literary elements (you can choose more if you wish), and create an essay where you identify and analyze these elements and how they enrich the poem.

Strategies for the essay:

· Your essay should contain a relevant and engaging introduction which then leads to your thesis statement. Please include poet’s full name and title of poem somewhere in your introduction. Titles of poems are placed in quotation marks.

· Thesis: The thesis statement presents the central, analytical idea to be explored within your essay. It should indicate, either implicitly or explicitly, the poetic devices used to enrich the poem’s theme or themes. Your analysis will support that claim.

Here’s a hypothetical example:

Through the use of irony and graphic imagery juxtaposed by a distant, nonchalant tone of the speaker of “Saboteur,” Ha Jin effectively emphasizes the political corruption in his native China.

**Here, the writer explicitly mentions the poetic devices used within the poem and how they contribute to theme.

If the writer chose to present this implicitly it could be presented as:

Through the use of various poetic elements within the work “Saboteur,” Ha Jin effectively emphasizes….etc.

**Here, although the writer does not explicitly present the literary elements, it is still quite clear what the purpose will be. Readers will have to continue reading to find out what those specific poetic elements are, acting as a “hook” to engage them.

**Often, if you have more than three literary elements to examine, an implied thesis can be effective. Remember to avoid the use of first person or that “announcement” tone for thesis—i.e. My essay will examine…

· The body of your essay will contain your analysis, divided into paragraphs. Stylistically, the number of body paragraphs you use will depend on the number of literary elements you are examining. If you have three literary elements, you can devote a body paragraph to each element. Often, you might need two body paragraphs to discuss one literary element. This will be dictated by your poem selection. Be sure to have clear transitions/topic sentences between paragraphs that take readers smoothly from one paragraph to the next. Within your body paragraphs, be sure to include quoted and documented lines to support your points (format given in next section).

· You should close with a clearly delineated conclusion where you can re-emphasize thesis, highlight key points, and discuss theme or themes of the poem.

· Citations from the selected poem: You should incorporate direct lines from the poem to support your analysis. If citing more than one line, please use a forward slash to indicate where a line ends and a new one begins. SCROLL

Here’s an example:

The poem opens with an eerie, somewhat disturbing image and the introduction of a mysterious woman: “Even the long-dead are willing to move. / Without a word, she came with me from the desert” (1. 2-3).

Please follow the parenthetical citation format for citing lines of poem according to MLA. Here, this indicates stanza 1, lines 2-3. If your selected poem is one stanza only, just cite the line number(s).

Also note that when quote is introduced by a full signal sentence, as this example does, a colon is placed after that signal sentence. This avoids what are known as “dropped in” quotes.

You can also opt to smoothly integrate the quote into your sentence—i.e. An eerie, somewhat disturbing image of a mysterious woman is presented when the poet writes, “Even the long-dead are willing to move. / Without a word, she came with me from the desert” (1. 2-3).

· Guidance with literary elements. Some elements you might discuss in your analysis are below. These are just some examples; feel free to discuss other elements such as sound devices if they are dominant within your selected poem:

“Mother to Son:” central metaphor of the staircase, symbolism of the “tacks, splinters, etc.”, dialect of the mother, repetition

“Facing It:” simile, metaphor, sensory imagery, shifting tone of the speaker

“Happiness:” simile, metaphor, personification, imagery, anaphora (the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines).

“Those Winter Sundays:” shifting tone of the speaker, imagery, personification, repetition, sound devices such as alliteration and consonance

· As with the Characterization & Character Arc essay, this assignment does not require research. Any evidence of plagiarism will result in a failing grade. Since you will only use this one source, your selected poem, you do not need to have a Works Cited page.

· If you believe that integrating outside sources would enrich your work, you should document your sources with in-text citations and a Works Cited page. Additional supplementation: Thesis Example for Poetry Analysis; Sample student-written Poetry Analysis Essay beneath in Modules Week 5.

The rubric to be used for assessment of this essay is below:

Grading Rubric / English 1020

Poetry Analysis

**Each essay will be assessed by the grading category/rubric that best corresponds to content. A solid “A” will begin at a 95; anything above a 95 is generally considered to be superior. An A- will start at a 93, a paper that is borderline A/B but leans more toward the A scale will start at a 90, and so forth. Percentages may be higher or lower depending on content and mechanics.

Assessment:

Instructor’s notes: