This document provides instructions for an assignment asking students to analyze imagery in an assigned poem. Students are instructed to choose a poem from the readings, identify and discuss key images, and explain how the images contribute to the overall meaning of the poem. A 150-200 word response is required, including evidence from quotations, and citations formatted in APA style. An example response analyzing Robert Frost's poem "The Oven Bird" is also provided.
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Imagery in PoetryBy Thursday, post your response of at least 1.docx
1. Imagery in Poetry
By Thursday, post your response of at least 150-200 words to
the Discussion Area. To support your comments, your
discussion answers should include specific information and
quotations from the readings.
Prompt:
Choose a poem from the assigned readings, which are listed in
the Syllabus and found in our course eBook.
Title your discussion response with the poem’s title. This will
help other students see which poems have already been
discussed.
Once a poem has been discussed twice, please do not choose it
for analysis.
Review all of the thread starters including the closed list before
beginning your response.
Post a response of at least 150-200 words, focusing on the
elements below.
Identify the key images in the poem, which you believe are vital
to understanding it.
Provide a detailed discussion of how those images function in
the poem.
2. Do the images work together to form a coherent pattern?
What ideas or feelings are conveyed by the images?
How do the images contribute to the overall meaning of the
poem?
Tips
Remember to provide evidence for your claims in the form of
quoted passages from the poem. Quotations, paraphrases, and
summaries should be cited according to APA rules of style,
including in-text and reference citations. Quoted material
should not exceed 25% of the document.
Use the
APA Citation Helper
resource for properly citing resources.
Post directly to the discussion; do not attach a document. Make
sure you check spelling and grammar, and use APA style for
citations.
Example Response
Students often ask to see a model of what is expected, so here is
an example post:
3. “The Oven Bird” is a sonnet by Robert Frost, and the poem
focuses on a bird that sings a sad song about death and loss.
Some of the key images include variations on singing, the
seasons, and foliage, such as leaves and flowers. The following
lines illustrate the use of these images: “He says that leaves are
old and that for flowers/Mid-summer is to spring as one to
ten/He says the early petal-fall is past/When pear and cherry
bloom went down in showers” (Frost, 2016, Lines 4-7). The
images in the poem work together to tell a story about the oven
bird, which has a loud, discordant song that “makes the solid
tree trunks sound again” (Frost, 2016, Line 3). The bird sings
about having lost its first set of young to predators, and now the
bird must learn to go on living with great loss. The sad yet
brave feeling of the poem is summed up in the final couplet:
“The question that he frames in all but words/Is what to make of
a diminished thing” (Frost, 2016, Lines 13-14).
Frost, R. (2016). The oven bird. In L.G. Kirszner & S.R.
Mandell (Eds.),
Compact Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing
[VitalSource digital version] (p. 123). Boston: Cengage.