Poetry Tie up all the things you've learned this semester: When you write your essay, I want you to think about the chapter elements that apply to your poem and to your essay approach. Use the checklist to help you! Can you spot stories under the water of the obvious island in the poem? Do you have a poem where characters develop? Is the beginning is a feature to notice? Is the poem painting a picture? Obviously, not all those points apply to every poem choice. Pick a poem you want to tackle, then dig for what of those four points you think you can address. Rearrange them in your essay so you have an introduction that invites readers to be interested. Make some points for readers to consider, then wrap up the essay with something we readers should remember about your poem choice--and maybe you can find a twist of thinking for readers: a bit of the author's own words on the poem? a bit of world history that applies? something happening today that could have easily been the same sort of subject? One warning, poetry tempts writers into including moral lessons. Be careful not to tell us what we must learn from the poem you write about. Describe it fully, analyze what is there, and avoid what isn't. If you do that well, a reader can see the lesson to be learned without you needing to tell us what to think. _______________________________________________________________________________________ √ Checklist: Getting Ideas for Writing Arguments about Poems If you are going to write about a short poem (say, under thirty lines), it’s not a bad idea to copy out the poem, writing or typing it double-spaced. By writing it out you will be forced to notice detail, down to the punctuation. After you have copied the poem, proofread it carefully against the original. Catching and error—even the addition or omission of a comma—may help you to notice a detail in the original that you might otherwise have overlooked. And now that you have the poem with ample space between the lines, you have a worksheet with room for jottings. A good essay is based on a genuine response to a poem; a response may be stimulated in part by first reading the poem aloud and then considering the following questions. First Response o What was your response to the poem on first reading? Did some parts especially please or displease you, or puzzle you? After some study—perhaps checking the meanings of some words in a dictionary and reading the poem several times—did you modify your initial response to the parts and to the whole? Speaker and Tone o Who is the speaker? (Consider age, sex, personality, frame of mind, and tone of voice.) Is the speaker defined precisely (for instance, an older woman speaking to a child), or is the speaker simply a voice meditating? (Jot down your first impressions, then reread the poem and make further jottings, if necessary.) o Do you think the speaker is fully aware of what he or she is saying, or does the speaker unconsci.