You must complete the required textbook readings in preparation for the Poetry Essay. This will equip you to objectively respond to the readings by compiling information from a variety of sources in order to compose a persuasive analysis of a literary work. You will also learn to follow standard usage in English grammar and sentence structure; identify the theme and structure of each literary selection and the significant characteristics or elements of each genre studied; and evaluate the literary merit of a work.

(Syllabus MLOs: A, B, C, D, F, G and Module/Week 5 LOs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

Guidelines for Developing your Paper Topic

The “Writing about Literature” section of your Perrine’s Literature textbook (pp. 1–54) and the “Writing” section of Harbrace Essentials (pp. 1–12, 18–21, 22–28) provide pointers which will be helpful for academic writing in general, and more specifically for your literary essay. Be sure that you read this section before doing any further work for this assignment. Take particular notice of the examples of poetry essays on pp. 43–48 of Perrine’s Literature.

POETRY ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS

In Module/Week 5, you will write a 750-word (approximately 3 pages) essay that analyzes 1 poem from the Poetry Unit.

Before you begin writing the essay, carefully read the below guidelines for developing your paper topic and review the Poetry Essay Grading Rubric to see how your submission will be graded. Gather all of your information, plan the direction of your essay, and organize your ideas by developing a 1-page thesis statement and outline for your essay as you did for your Fiction Essay.

Format the thesis statement and the outline in a single Microsoft Word document using current MLA, APA, or Turabian style, whichever corresponds to your degree program; check your Perrine’s Literature textbook, the Harbrace Essentials Handbook, and/or its companion website, MindTap, to ensure the correct citation format is used.

Poetry Essay Requirements

The Poetry Essay should include:

• Title page (see the sample)
• Thesis & Outline page
• Poetry Essay itself followed by a
• Works Cited / References / Bibliography page of the poem & any other sources used in the essay

Poetry Essay choices:

Choose 1 of these poems from the list below to address in your essay:

Not all of the poems from the course are listed for consideration for this essay.

• Matthew Arnold
  • Dover Beach
• William Blake
  • The Lamb
  • The Tiger
  • The Chimney Sweeper
• Robert Browning
  • My Last Duchess
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • Kublai Khan
• Emily Dickinson
  • It Sifts from Leaden Sieves
  • There’s No Frigate Like a Book
• John Donne
  • Batter my Heart, Three-Personed God
  • Death Be Not Proud
• T. S. Eliot
  • Journey of the Magi
• Robert Frost
  • Design
  • Nothing Gold can Stay
  • Out, Out—
  • The Road Not Taken
  • Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Poetry Essay choices (cont.):

Choose 1 of these poems from the list below to address in your essay:

Not all of the poems from the course are listed for consideration for this essay.

• George Herbert
  • Virtue
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
  • The Caged Skylark
  • God’s Grandeur
  • Spring
• A. E. Housman
  • Eight-O-Clock
• John Keats
  • Ode to a Nightingale
• William Shakespeare
  • That Time of Year (Sonnet 73)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley
  • Ozymandias
• Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  • I Envy not in any Moods
  • In Memoriam
  • I Sing to him who Rests Below
  • Ulysses
• Dylan Thomas
  • Fern Hill
• William Butler Yeats
  • Sailing to Byzantium

Consider some (not all) of the following questions for the poem that you have chosen:

• What is or are the theme(s) of the poem?
• Is there a literal setting or situation in the poem? 
  • What lines from the poem tell the reader this information? 
    • What details does the author include?
• Is the setting symbolic?
• How would you describe the mood of the poem? 
  • What elements contribute to this mood?
• Is the title significant to the poem’s content or meaning?  How?
• What major literary devices and figures of speech does the poet use to communicate the theme(s)?
• How are rhyme and other metrical devices used in the poem? 
  • Do they support the poem’s overall meaning?  Why or why not?
• Is the identity of the poem’s narrator clear? 
  • How would you describe this person? 
  • What information, if any, does the author provide about the narrator?
• Does the narrator seem to have a certain opinion of or attitude (tone) about the poem’s subject matter?  How can you tell?