poetry comparison "For Brilliant answers"

ENG 112 : Poetry Essay

Note: don’t upload an electronic copy to Moodle/Turnitin just yet. Length: 3-4 pages. Typed, double-spaced, with standard 1-inch margins, 12pt font, and Work Cited. Number your pages and staple.

William Butler Yeats once said that when you have an argument with the world you write an essay, but when you have an argument with yourself you write a poem. Poetry’s advantage is that it can explore these complex arguments not only through its content (subject, characters, themes), but also largely through form (structure, layout, patterns of rhyme and meter, patterns of diction or imagery, repetition, etc.).

TASK: Select two complete poems from our anthology (i.e. not the ones that are just fragments), a pair that you think

does something interesting together. Write an essay that, by comparing and contrasting the poem’s form and content, forms an argument to suggest something significant the authors do with their subject. Put emphasis not merely on WHAT the poem is saying but HOW and WHY. (If you wish, one of the poems can come from outside the anthology).

PURPOSE: To practice extensive brainstorming, sustained close-reading and analysis, and argument-based essay writing.

CRITERIA: Papers will be graded on the sharpness of the observations, wisdom of the organization, precision of the

writing/grammar/punctuation, the level of interest generated by the comparisons and contrasts, and the degree to which the observations have been crafted into a unified argument.

Basic Writing Reminders:

-For this assignment, outside research is not only discouraged – it is forbidden. Work only with what you can get from the poem itself.

-Resist organizing your paper through a chronological treatment of each poem (papers that do this fall into the trap of merely retelling/summarizing the poem, whereas your true goal here is analysis). The strongest papers organize paragraphs around topic sentences that make a broad claim followed by specific details and evidence. Provide a concluding paragraph that recaps your point and brings out the larger significance involved in what you’ve demonstrated. End with a Works Cited listing the poems.

-To increase flow in your writing, be sure each paragraph has a strong topic sentence. Good topic sentences usually contain some sort of transition from the last paragraph and an argument (not just an observation but a debatable argument that advances your point) for the present one.

-Practice the important habit of granting writers poetic license to create speakers who are not themselves; rather than assuming the “I” in a first-person poem is the poet him- or her-self, it is safer to refer to them as the poem’s “speaker.”

-Be specific. Avoid overly-general statements like "the diction is descriptive," "the poet uses diction and imagery to convey her theme," or "the form of the poem makes it flow." Instead always specify the type of diction/imagery/form/etc. and which specific theme/description/flow.

-Don’t make claims for how all readers will react to a poem; instead, make evidence-supported claims for what the poem seems to be trying to do.

-Your conclusion should not simply repeat what you’ve said before, for it is a good place to consider the implications of your argument (it should answer the impatient reader’s question of “So what?”). Generally, a conclusion will begin by reasserting your argument, then moving on to suggest the larger significance that your thesis might have.

-Give your paper a suggestive title, one that gestures toward the direction of your paper.

Format:

-Because these are short poems, and because your anthology does not use line numbers, when giving evidence, you do not need to cite the line number or page number in parentheses.

-As with titles of short stories, titles of poems should be placed in quotation marks (not italicized – save that for titles of big works like novels, plays, and movies). In contrast, the title of your essay gets neither italics nor quotation marks.

-When quoting three or fewer lines of poetry, set them off with quotation marks, include all punctuation as it appears in the poem, and separate lines with slash marks, like so:

Dorothy Parker’s poem “Resume” concludes, “Nooses give;/ Gas smells awful;/ You might as well live.”

-When quoting four or more lines, type them as a block quotation indented five spaces, and set off from the text by a skipped line (no quotation marks needed):

Dorothy Parker’s poem then concludes:

Guns aren’t lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

She includes this curt ending to support her point that...

-Avoid quoting long excerpts; it is best to quote lines in small amounts so that you can explain thoroughly the significance of that fragment as it relates to your point. Also, avoid making line-by-line translations – instead, seek out patterns of evidence for whatever you’re showing.

-Include an MLA-style works cited at the end (see the Wadsworth Handbook). No need to use a separate page for this.

-Be direct and specific in your phrasing: any place your draft refers to the poem’s “theme” “message” or “point,” replace these empty words with the specific point.

-If you are working with a poem not in the anthology, cut/paste a copy of it at the end.

-Remember to schedule for an appt. at the Writing Center for paper 1, 2, or 3, and to talk over a paper in progress with me by Week 14.