Poem Analysis Paper Guidelines

Objective

To construct a persuasive argument about the meaning of a poem by John Keats.

Procedure

1. Choose a poem by John Keats from the syllabus, and write an analysis of it.

2. Take notes including specific details in the poem, details that explain its meaning and significance. Such details include rhyme, meter, word choice, comparison/contrast, punctuation, context in a larger collection of poems and related texts, and anything else the author has used in order to make his or her meaning clear to an audience. (It may not be possible to find an example of each of these elements.) Focus on those that are the most useful in explaining the meaning of the poem.

3. Formulate a thesis statement summing up the meaning and significance of the chosen poem. This thesis will undoubtedly change as you write your paper, but at least it will give you a starting point. A good thesis is arguable rather than obvious.

4. Write a draft of your argument about the poem. Refer to specific words and phrases in the selected passage in order to support the points in your argument. You may also refer to other quotations in the larger work, as long as you maintain your focus on the passage in question. You may also refer to critical works on Keats's poetry in the Norton Critical Edition, but this is not a requirement. You are also welcome to cite other texts, such as Bressler's Literary Criticism.

5. Bring a word-processed, correctly formatted draft of this paper to class on February 22nd, 2018, for peer editing. If the poem is short, you may opt to include it at the top of the first page of your paper.

6. After considering feedback from peer editors and reconsidering your own argument, revise your paper.

7. Proofread your draft to identify and correct spelling and grammatical errors.

8. Turn in the completed final draft along with a peer-edited working draft in class on March 1st, 2018.

Close Reading

Close reading means paying careful attention to details in a written work. It is an element in any literary analysis, regardless of your chosen critical approach. Since you will be looking more closely at this poem than most people who read it, your paper can offer perspectives on its meaning that will engage your audience and challenge its expectations. In analyzing a poem, you might ask yourself the following questions:

What, literally, does the poem attempt to describe and/or argue for?

Which techniques has the poet used to express her or his ideas? Does the poem make use of traditional patterns of rhyme and meter? Does it break with such traditions?

Does the poem use any forms of figurative language in order to express complex ideas—metaphor, simile, personification, symbol?

How is this poem different from other poems by the same poet? Why should your reader pay close attention to this poem? How does it reward our close attention to it?

What will make this poem analysis interesting to an audience consisting of your classmates, your teacher and yourself? You will want to tell them something new—that would not otherwise have occurred to them after reading the poem.

Thesis Statement

This is a one-sentence version of the whole paper, and it should be in an arguable claim. It should not merely restate the passage in your own words. A good thesis statement refers directly to the chosen poem, saying something like, "In this poem, John Keats . . ."

Good thesis statements will challenge readers in some way to regard the poem in a new light. They may make claims regarding the poem's importance to the larger corpus of Keats's work, or to a little-noticed subtext within the poem.

Some possible thesis language:

This poem provides one of the clearest examples of Keats's romanticism by showing . . .

The dominant feature of this poem is a contradiction between . . . and . . . which Keats must then reconcile by . . .

This poem may appear on its surface to be about . . . but it is actually about . . .

These are just a few examples of thesis statement language that can lead to productive arguments about the text. Please adapt these to your needs or develop your own.

Writing Tips

1. MLA format means you should include a list of works cited at the end of your paper, even if it only includes one work. For example:

   Keats, John. "To * * * * * *." Keats's Poetry and Prose. Edited by Jeffrey N. Cox, W. W. Norton, 2013, p. 50.

2. Some grammatical tips:

   1. Avoid using the passive voice whenever it is possible to do so. When writing in the passive voice, you remove the subject from the sentence or at least de-emphasize it. This makes writing less engaging to most readers.

      Example:

      PASSIVE VOICE:

      The sublimity and refinement of the painter's ideal world are sensed in contrast to the naked brutality of primeval nature. (Stuart Sperry, "The Epistle to John Hamilton Reynolds," Keats's Poetry and Prose, p. 590)

      (Structure: object/"to be" verb/past participle)

      ACTIVE VOICE:

      One senses the sublimity and refinement of the painter's ideal world in contrast to the naked brutality of primeval nature.

      (Note structure: subject/verb/object—with the addition of the implied subject)

   2. Avoid contractions when writing college papers. Replace they're with they are and replace don't with do not (these are just a few examples of the numerous possible contractions out there.

   3. Italicization is the best way to signal that you are referring to a word itself and not to the thing that the word represents. Notice how I am using italicization of the terms in the following section "d". You should also italicize titles of books (even in parenthetical references and lists of works cited) and foreign-language words like Bildungsroman or sine qua non.

   4. The word it's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction of it is. The word its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive of it. Its and whose both deviate from the standard rule about possessives.