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Introduction to Poetry English 325 Spring 2012 |
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Slate Assignment
In this paper, your job will be to read through the discussion about a particular poem in the online magazine Slate, and then evaluate the discussion, noting the best points and ideas about the poem and pulling those ideas together to describe how the parts of the poem work together to create its overall meaning and emotional effect. Your discussion should be 3 to 4 pages long.
This assignment is intended to give you practice and guidance in interpreting and discussing poetry, with the Slate discussion as assistance. But if you want to go it alone and write an explication of a poem on your own, you are certainly encouraged to do that.
One very good starting point for your reading in Slate is here, where Pinsky answers a number of questions that several of you have asked.
You can look for poems to discuss either here (although the slugs at Slate haven't updated this for a while) or here -- once you pick your poem, scroll down to the bottom and click on the comments and "Or join the discussion on the Fray."
1. Choose a poem that we have not discussed in class, and check with me to make sure it’s a good selection: that there’s enough in it to talk about for three pages, basically. Choose a poem that you like, since you’ll be spending some time with it. 2. You’ll first want to answer the central question: What does the poet want to accomplish in this poem? Then you’ll look at the poem line by line and ask, how does this image (or word, or other feature of the poem) help the poet accomplish the poem’s overall purpose? Consult me early and as often as you like about everything from your choice of poem to the specifics of your discussion of it. 3. Here is a list of questions that can help you generate material for your analysis. Also, examine your own previous experience and reading – what of that material might apply to the poem? I will also be basing your grade, in part, on your making reference to at least some of the information that we’ve read so far in the textbook – that is, tying in some of what Meyer says to your reading of the poem. 4. See Ch. 11 for guidance in writing about poetry. Your paper should look closely at the aspects of poetry we will have studied by the time you write the draft; therefore you’ll be concentrating in particular on the imagery, metaphors, diction and emotion in the poem. You can also discuss other aspects of the poem such as its form, sound, etc., if you feel comfortable doing that and/or have the necessary backing from the online discussion. 5. The final draft should be in your
best revised and carefully edited prose.
Alternative assignment: Make a short video about a poem of your choice. I'll grade you primarily on the basis of how imaginative and appropriate your choices of visuals to reflect the poem are; if you just repeat the visuals of the poem -- for instance, if you're doing Williams's "To Waken an Old Lady" and you only have images of a flight of birds, bare trees, snow, weeds -- you won't get a very good grade. Some decent examples are here and here (the Louise Mathias poem that the latter video is based on is here: click on "Poems" and it's the first one. DON'T worry too much about the technical facility of the video -- I don't care whether you're a great videographer or not, and it won't affect your grade. What you'll be graded on is, as above, the appropriateness and imagination with which your visuals engage the poem. With your video, submit a brief cover letter (approximately 1 page single spaced or a little less) describing why you chose to film the poem in the particular way you have.
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