INFORMATIVE POETRY PAPER – Those winter Sundays by Robert Hayden
ESSAY #4: INFORMATIVE POETRY PAPER
Essay #4: Poetry is worth up to 200 points, while its MLA 8th Edition Works Cited* listing five or more sources in alphabetical order earns a separate grade of up to 100 points. The MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page does not count toward the 1,000+ word count—although it is submitted with the overall paper, the MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page receives a separate grade.
You are encouraged to use headings in your paper to separate each portion of your paper into sections, going in order of appearance with each of the numbers below starting at number 4. For example, you may have a heading that says, “Author’s Life”, followed by a “Poetic Subgenres” heading, then a “Chapter 10—Situation and Setting” heading, and so on.
1.) Your paper should be 1,000+ words (around 5 pages long, double spaced, with no extra spacing)
• It should use MLA 8th Edition formatting and style, with the correct MLA 8th Edition format on the left side, your last name and page number in the upper right corner, and one-inch (1”) margins throughout. The date should be listed Date Month Year (21 April 2020 etc.) in the proper MLA 8th Edition format.
• It should contain MLA 8th Edition In-text Citations. Each time you write a sentence for which you have to consult a source, you need to have a citation. If you tell us a poem or song was written in a certain year, you need to cite the source that told you the year. The citation can come before a quote, such as: According to Bubba Gump of the American Shrimp Boat Association, “99% of people in Louisiana love shrimp gumbo.” Alternately, you might write your citation like this: 99% of people in Louisiana love shrimp gumbo (Gump).
• If your paper has even one source that looks like this: (Grazer 2012) (Johnson 1999) (Forenza 2011)…it is not an MLA 8th Edition paper—it is a Psychology paper for a Psychology class. Your paper will earn a “zero”, and I won’t grade any further once I see a citation written like this, because it’s not my job to grade Psychology papers :-0. If you want a paper using Psychology Paper Format to be graded, send it to a Psychology professor :-O.
• Again, your paper needs to have an MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page and cite five or more sources.
For exhaustive information on MLA 8th Edition In-text citations, formatting and style, and Works Cited pages, please note:
—“Quotation, Citation, and Documentation” starting on page 1090 can be very helpful. This chapter contains a wealth of information on citing your sources in MLA 8th Edition format.
Remember: if you mention anything for which you needed to consult a source, you absolutely have to cite the source you consulted immediately in that sentence. In MLA 8th Edition Format you will give the source you used each sentence for which you used that source.
Citing your sources is, like, one of the most important rules of the MLA (heck, it’s one of the most important rules of college), and you should make it a habit to always support any declarative statement with a source, if the statement is more than common knowledge for US college-level audiences. If you say, “The poem was written in 2012”, you need to give us a source.
If you write, “This song was written to show others life on the street” you need to give a source
If you say, “The author married their best friend” you need to give us a source.
If you tell us they grew up in Chicago, you need to give us a source.
If you give us the definition of a word, you need to give us a source.
—Starting on page 1108 you will find information on how to format your MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page.
—If you have a citation that starts like this: Khaza, Ajhindar (2021)… or which has “Web” or “Print” typed on one of the citation’s lines, you’re accidentally writing an MLA 7th Edition or an APA “references” page, and your MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page is not, in fact, an MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page.
Any citations page with a heading that says “References”, or “Bibliography”, or which is formatted in any format other than MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page format will earn a ZERO :-(…
—If you have a Works Cited citation which is just a web link, you have not submitted an MLA 8th Edition Works Cited page. Your citations must be typed in the required MLA 8th Edition format as shown on pages 1108 to 1119, as well as detailed on the Purdue OWL’s “MLA Formatting and Style Guide”.
—Please reference and read the Purdue Online Writing Lab, or OWL’s, “MLA Formatting and Style Guide” online.
—You may do a Google Search for “Purdue OWL MLA Formatting and Style Guide”. Usually a phone Google search will automatically show “Purdue Owl MLA” as you type in a search; click on that. The Purdue OWL (created by Purdue University) features a wealth of up-to-date information about writing, formatting, and citing papers in MLA 8th Edition format.
—On the Purdue Website, you can access their MLA Vidcast Series for information on MLA 8th Edition.
—You may also visit The Purdue OWL YouTube channel for information on MLA 8th Edition.
—You can, of course, text me MLA questions at 610-462-2191. Please avoid texting me questions without first having done your level-headed best to find the answers!
2.) At the beginning of your paper, please include the poem (or song lyrics) you are doing. Don’t use the poem as part of your word count (doing so would be unfair to people who choose short poems or songs).
3.) You are encouraged to use scholarly journals, websites by reputable sources (museums, colleges, universities, government organizations like Veterans organizations, Library sources, etc.), as well as email, FaceTime, Skype, etc. interviews with professionals who may know about the topic. For example, for a poem describing warfare, you could contact a Veteran of war, a US Army source, or a professor who teaches military history.
4.) Introduce the author’s life using metaphor, simile, and descriptive language and detail, in such a way that we understand the kind of life they led, rather than a rattled-off list of schools they attended, names of cities we never heard of, or dates that mean nothing to the average reader. All your information about the writer will generally be cited. Also, include information about the world in which the author lived, for example:
Did they suffer under Segregation?
Deal with an alcoholic parent?
Suffer a tragic loss?
Have an addiction?
This should not just be a “book report” about the author culled from Wikipedia; try to find original sources, such as, if the author is still alive, contacting them on social media or via email and asking them questions about the poem they wrote.
Your introduction should be filled with details about the author that connect to our lives, or the lives of those around you, or that create a sense of mystery, wonder, or even revulsion regarding the life they led.
5.) Go through the beginning of the section on Poetry, and find “Poetic Subgenres and Kinds” (402).
Once you’ve read about the various forms poems tell us what kind of poem your poem is, and why the poem is defined as being that type of poem. Is the poem narrative (403), dramatic (405), lyric (406), descriptive or observational (409), dramatic monologue (410), sonnet (402, 558, 567), ode (406, 421), or ballad (403, 421, 557)?
Note: all of these terms can be found with full definitions in the Glossary in the back of the book.
6.) Chapter 10—Situation and Setting: What Happens? Where? When? (442-447). Relate these to us using as many interpretations as you wish.
7.) Chapter 11—Theme and Tone (462-467). What is the overall theme of the poem? What is its tone? How does it employ the concepts and terms from Chapters 13, 14, 15, and 16 come together to support this theme and tone?
8.) Chapter 12—Language: Word Choice and Order (476-482). Tell us about the word choices: does the poem or song use slang? Words with double meanings? Are there words you thought you knew, but when you looked them up, you found out they had other meanings?
9.) Chapter 13—Visual Imagery and Figures of Speech (486-502). Includes Metaphor, Personification, Simile and Analogy, and Allusion. Are there any metaphors you know of in the poem, or perhaps what you think might have been a metaphor back in the time it was written (but in our modern day, we don’t know that metaphor anymore because times have changed)? Does it make inanimate objects like a gun become a character using personification? Are there any allusions to events, objects, people, or concepts in the poem, that you’ve uncovered in your research and that people, back when it was written, would have just known about?
10.) Chapter 14—Symbol (503-509). Be sure to look for symbols in the poem/song, and try to see if there are symbols you may not recognize at first, and tell us about these symbols and their origin. How are they expressed in the poem? How did you come about recognizing the symbol or symbols? For example, in America, white is sometimes seen as a symbol of purity and perhaps holiness, but in some cultures, white is the color of funerals, of death.
11.) Chapter 15—The Sounds of Poetry (517-524). This includes crucial terms to use in your presentation. What is the End Rhyme and Rhyme Scheme (518)? Does it use Internal, Slant and/or Eye rhyme (518)? Look for Onomatopoeia (519) in the poem—does the poem use onomatopoeia to sound like the chirping of crickets, the roar of ocean waves, the wind, or maybe the howling of wolves?
Examine the word choices, and look for words that, put together, “can be powerful tools, generating meaning, as well as creating mood or simply providing emphasis” such as alliteration, consonance, assonance, and anaphora (519); do you find any of these repetitions of sound in the poem? What effect do such sounds have on the poem and those reading the poem?
For instance, the book mentions long vowels that “slow down the pace” while “awkward, hard-to-pronounce consonants” are blended with the long vowels to slow down the speaking of certain poems (523). Look for the ways the rhythm and pacing are affected by the word choices as well as the meter of the work, and describe to us how the rhythm and pacing are affected by word choices.
12.) By doing all of the above, weave throughout your paper relating the poem to our lives by showing us how we can identify with the poem’s message.
13.) Conclude by tying it all together, leaving us with a lasting impression about the author, the poem, and your thoughts on the poem.
Discussion Board
Response to “Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen
For this 25-point assignment, please visit the Discussion Forum, read the “Dulce et Decorum est” Forum assignment, then post a response to the questions by Thursday night at 11:59 PM. Then, comment on or respond to three or more of your peers in the discussion forum; you may click the box that says “Create Thread” to begin posting. Furthermore, you may upload any imagery, illustrations, or links you want which will help increase our understanding of your points.
Your responses should cite sources when necessary (if you give any information which is not “common knowledge”); be written as complete, grammatically correct sentences; and seek to expand upon or relate to the commentary provided by your peers.
Item
Reading Assignment for Poetry: To Prepare You for Essay #4: Poetry Response & Analysis
In order to help you prepare for your next assignment–Essay #4: Poetry Response & Analysis, you should first scroll through your book (if you have an e-copy) or page through your textbook, and read the following sections.
Note that the readings are taken from a variety of chapters in the book, but in most cases don’t actually require you to read the entire chapter–the focus is on the main points of each chapter, which you can apply to your upcoming essay #4. Earmark the next week to read all the sections, as going through each of the sections can definitely help you craft a well-rounded essay about a poem you choose out of the textbook. Don’t “rush” reading them; take your time, and do your best to absorb the information given. It’s a lot to take in, I know, but it all takes the place of classroom lecture and notes written on the whiteboard.
Here are the sections in the textbook you should read for homework over the next week (with page numbers in parenthesis):
Poetry: Reading, Responding, Writing (398-427)
Speaker: Whose Voice Do We Hear? (428-433)
Situation and Setting: What Happens? Where? When? (442-447)
Theme and Tone (462-467)
Language: Word Choice and Order (476-482)
Visual Imagery and Figures of Speech (486-502)
Symbol 9503-509)
The Sounds of Poetry (517-524)
Your success in Essay #4: Poetry Response & Analysis depends on how well you integrate and build upon the information given in these sections of the book, so again, please, read the noted pages well, annotating as you go. Doing so–meaning, writing notes by hand in the margins of your book*–can help you formulate your thoughts, generate ideas for your paper, and spur your imagination to generate new content for your upcoming paper.
*If you are worried about writing in your book because you wish to “sell” your book back, please realize that, at least for this year, there will obviously be no book buybacks (since a book buyback is clearly not “essential” to fighting the Pandemic), so you might feel free to write within your textbook as you see fit.
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