Poetry Essay

Instructions

Find any of the poems we have read thus far in our NITL text. It must be one assigned in the syllabus / course schedule, or you will receive a zero on this essay. Stories are attached.

· Williams "The Red Wheelbarrow"

· Shakespeare Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day")

· Rich "Diving into the Wreck"

· Poe "The Raven"

· Shelley "Ode to the West Wind"

· Thomas "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

The scope of your response is 500-550 words. Use the rubric to help understand how your writing will be graded.  

Write an analysis of the poem using 3 essential elements of the poem to discuss it (see list below).  Also discuss how these elements contribute to the message or theme of the poem.  Some elements that you might consider: speaker, situation, setting, theme, tone, language, imagery, figures of speech, symbol, sounds, structure, form.  Not everyone will choose to discuss the same elements as it varies depending on which poem you choose.

Do not use any outside sources other than the poem itself in our textbook. Be sure to format your works cited page as a work from an anthology in correct MLA style, and also use parenthetical citations (Heaney Lines 4-5).

For example the “The Red Wheelbarrow” MLA citation is:

Williams, William. “The Red Wheelbarrow”. The Norton Introduction to Literature, 11th Edition. Ed. Spencer Richardson-Jones. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2014. 557. Print.