First Essay Assignment: Analyzing Poetry

ESSAY 1: Analyzing Poetry

Length: Approximately 1200-1500 words (4-5 pages, double-spaced)
Draft Workshop: October 15th
Essay Due: October 22nd in class

During the weeks we are spending on poetry, we will read and discuss a wide variety of poems. They were written in different historical moments, employ various poetic forms and styles (which they sometimes follow rigorously and sometimes modify), and these poems engage with a diverse array of subject matter (interpersonal love, impending death, war, gender/racial equality, poetry, nature, religion & spirituality…). In addition to this archive of poetry, we will have worked on several reading strategies to help analyze a poem. We attend to the functions of lines, rhyme, rhythm, forms like the sonnet, pace, imagery, ambiguities, punctuation, etc. This essay is an opportunity for you to exercise some of these strategies as a way of making an analytical argument about one poem that we have not read in class.

For this essay, you will select ONE of the poems from the list below. The purpose of this essay is to construct a cohesive, concise, and convincing argument about a single poem. A successful essay will incorporate the following:

o A Clear Thesis: an effective thesis is focused and requires evidence and explanation to convince the reader.
o Evidence: Especially in an essay this short, it is imperative that you ground your claims in evidence directly from the text. Include quotes to show what parts of a text give you certain impressions or ideas, and explain why they give you those ideas/impressions. An outstanding essay will also be able to incorporate some counter-arguments about the evidence it uses.
o Analysis of Form AND Content: Be sure to construct your analysis by discussing BOTH the subject matter or content of the poem AND the poetic forms and structures at work in the poem. An outstanding essay will analyze evidence that shows relationships between form and content.

Guidelines:
o Research is not necessary. For such a short essay, I do not want to read thoughts other than your own. This also makes it easier for you to create an original thesis and argument without the risk of being overly dependent on another critic’s ideas.
o Make sure you choose appropriate, convincing evidence. It should relate to your thesis and to the other pieces of evidence used in the essay. Remember that sometimes “less is more” when it comes to how much you quote. It’s better to analyze fully a selection of key moments in a text rather than include a large group of them that are incompletely addressed.
o Use appropriate academic language and style. Proofread and edit for grammar and style.
o Proper MLA citation for quotes.


The List of Poems: You can likely find most of these poems online, and I suggest using bartleby.com or Google books. I recommend looking at several if not all before settling on your selection for the essay. Once you’ve chosen, it might be a good idea to find the poem in print in the library to have an accurate printing upon which to make your analysis.



Frank O’Hara “Having a Coke with You” or “Why I Am Not a Painter”
Li-Young Lee “Persimmons”
Elizabeth Bishop “Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance”
Robert Browning “Porphyria’s Lover” or “My Last Duchess”
Langston Hughes “The Weary Blues” or “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” or “I, Too”
Allen Ginsberg “A Supermarket in California”
Robinson Jeffers “Hurt Hawks” or “Shine, Perishing Republic”
Percy Shelley “Ozymandias”
Rita Dove “Dusting”
E.A. Robinson “Richard Cory”
Marianne Moore “To a Snail” or “The Mind is an Enchanting Thing”