Assignment One
Analysis of a Poem

Objective

To construct a persuasive argument about the meaning of a poem by Robert Frost or Langston Hughes. The argument should involve a close consideration of details in the text in question

Procedure

• Choose a poem from the syllabus by Robert Frost or Langston Hughes.

• Take notes including specific details in the poem that explain its meaning and significance. Such details may include meter, line breaks, context, word choice, comparison/contrast, imagery, punctuation, and anything else the poet has used in order to make the meaning clear to an audience.

• Formulate a thesis statement about the meaning and importance of the chosen poem. This thesis will undoubtedly change as you write your paper, but at least it will give you a place to start.

• Write a draft of your argument in support of the thesis statement. Refer to specific words and phrases in the poetic work to support the points in your argument. You may also refer to quotations from other poems on the syllabus, as long as you use them to explain the meaning of the poem in question.

• Bring a word-processed, correctly formatted draft of this paper to class on January 30th, 2018, for peer editing.

• After considering feedback you receive from peer editors and reconsidering your own argument, revise your paper. You may also sign up to meet with me to discuss a draft at this point.

• Proofread your draft to remove spelling and grammatical errors.

• Turn in the completed final draft along with a peer-edited working draft in class on February 8th, 2018.

Close Reading

Close reading means paying careful attention to details in a written work. Since you will be looking more closely at this poem than will most people who read it, your paper can offer perspectives on its meaning that will interest your audience and challenge readers' expectations. In analyzing specific lines from a poem, you may ask yourself the following questions:

What, literally, takes place in the poem?

To what extent does the poem follow traditional metrical or rhyming patterns? What determines the poet's placement of line breaks?

Are there connections between this poem and the other ones in the collection? What are they?

How is this poem different from any other poem by this within the corpus of this poet or among a larger collection of poems by similar poets?

Does the poet use any terms that could be unfamiliar to 21st-century readers? What do these terms mean? How have these terms changed since the original publication of this poem? Are there any terms that are unfamiliar for other reasons?

Is there anything distinctive about the arrangement of ideas in the poem? Are there clear parallels or contrasts implicit in the order of ideas? Is there anything distinctive about the author's diction or use of punctuation (distinctive as in unconventional, different from other authors' diction and punctuation).

Does the poet use any imagery? The most common forms of imagery include metaphor, simile, personification and symbol.

Does the poet allude to any other works of literature? Common sources of allusions are the Bible, Greek mythology, the works of Shakespeare—any work of literature could be the source of an allusion in a subsequent work of literature.

What will make this paper 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 this poem.

Writing Tips

I have based the following writing tips on common difficulties that students encounter when writing papers for this class.

1. Develop an arguable and interesting thesis statement that applies directly to the poem (i. e., that you could not write about any other poem).

2. Organize your argument around this thesis statement. Think of between two and four sub-points and structure your argument around them. Each subtopic should have its own, more focused thesis statement that should also be somewhat arguable. Break your argument down into subtopics in such a manner that you can safely avoid merely summarizing the text.

3. 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:

   Frost, Robert. "Home Burial." A Boy's Will and North of Boston. Signet, 2001. pp. 86-89.

   Hughes, Langston. "Ballad of the Girl Whose Name Is Mud." Selected Poems of Langston Hughes. Vintage, 1959. p. 149.

4. 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:

      ACTIVE VOICE: The narrator of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" builds a hut.
      (Note structure: subject/verb/object)

      PASSIVE VOICE: A hut is built by the narrator of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."
      (Structure: object/"to be" verb/past participle)

      ACTIVE VOICE: The narrator of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" built a hut.

      PASSIVE VOICE: A hut was built by the narrator of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."
      (Passive voice can exist in any verb tense.)

   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 and coup d'état. In addition, titles of books (and magazines) should always be in italics. Titles of poems and short stories go in quotes instead.

   4. Refer to events in a story in the present tense. The words in the short story are currently sitting there on the printed page, so we refer to the events that they depict as things that are currently happening.