Description: Creative Project & Reflective Essay

Source: Any of the texts on our syllabus
Due Date:
Bring a Hard Copy of your project and reflective essay to

* Note: If your final paper can be digitized, you can email it to me by this date as well.

I. Creative Project: 30% of grade
After having read the poems from any of the genres we’ve covered, you will use an artistic medium (poem, mixed tape, or drawing) to make your own creative project that will highlight, mimic, or showcase the genre and its particular formal features (caesura, enjambment, epic simile, poetic structure) along with its association with love/hate. Some examples may include writing your own satire or pastoral; making a “mix tape” of that formally or thematically relate to the different issues of love/hate we’ve discussed in class.

Note: that I will not be grading you exclusively on your artistic ability. Your reflective essay will be just as if not more important than your artistic production.

II. Reflective Essay: 70% of grade
Second, you will write a 4-6 page (double-spaced) reflective-critical essay that not only explains why you opted to write, for instance, a version of Savage’s “The Bastard” – but a critical explanations of why, for instance, you used an epic simile in part of your poem, or why the songs in the mixed tape closely echo formally or thematically aspects of love/hate. The entire list of literary terms we covered are at your disposal to use to help design and explain your choices. In short, you must prove to me that you understand different formal features embedded through the genres we covered – epic simile, couplet, caesura – by comparing it to a poem we’ve read if you’re composing your own, or by drawing parallel pictures to represent a heroic couplet. To do well on this assignment, your explanations must be specific and anchored to the original text in some way.

Since this is a reflective essay, you do not needa thesis, MLA citations, or aspects that typically conform to an academic paper.

Guidelines. As you draft your academic position paper, be sure to keep the following in mind:
Choose texts you enjoy or are particularly familiar with.
You are NOT being graded on your artistic prowess; you will be graded on the way your project and your reflective essay demonstrate a creative re-imagining of the themes we talked about.
Your reflective essay won’t be graded as a formal paper. Rather, it will be your way of demonstrating to me that you’ve thought creatively and have engaged intellectually with the forms and themes of the genre.
Your reflective essay can be persuasive: see this essay as an opportunity to convince me that you’ve considered thoughtfully the features of form, genre, love, and hate.
Don’t worry about the page requirement. I won’t be docking points off if you wrote 3 and ½ pages. You can write informally, and this will make it much easier to say more in your reflection.
Be wildly creative. The more adventurious you are, the easier you’ll have a time writing your reflective essay.

Criteria
Creativity of the project
Informal 4-6 page (double-spaced) reflective essay.
Thoughtful, specific explanation that includes literary terms of your artisitic choices.