The poets in our collection express emotions, actions, and motivations that can be interpreted in multiple ways.

In your essay about one (only one) poem that you choose from this collection, develop what you think are the poem’s meanings by analyzing word choices, metaphor(s)*, images, and other patterns in the poem.

Incorporate your own ‘voice’ as well as personal experience that is closely related to this poem in some way.

Explain your understandings of the poem’s specific language, metaphor(s), patterns of sound and shape.

Develop focused, specific ideas; explain how these ideas are related and why these ideas matter.

Make your readers—who might neither know nor care about the poem—become absorbed in your essay. In other words, interpret this poem’s related meanings and also convey a clear “so what?”

These goals should guide you as you compose your essay about one of the poems in this collection.

CONTENT

Your essay requires the following parts; structure them to create coherence and development of thinking:

Identification and explanation of at least one metaphor* in your chosen poem

Thoughtful, careful attention to the meaning of the poem’s language; how do you understand vivid images, word choices, recurring sounds, contrasts, repetitions?

Good incorporation of quotations. Avoid paraphrasing in this essay! Quote the poem and explain what its precise words mean. Create four or more quote sandwiches.

Closely related, specific ideas that develop throughout the essay and give your essay coherence.

At least one insightful question and penetrating speculations that further the development of your ideas.

A thorough explanation of the “so what?” Why do your ideas about this poem matter to you?

To others?

Your presence in the essay—why did you choose this poem? How does its language awaken feelings or memories in you? How do you relate personally to this poem? Include your experience and relate it directly to specific content in this poem.

*A metaphor is a comparison or conflation of two unlike things that allows a writer to imply fresh ideas about one or both of them.