Length: 3 pages, typed, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12 pt. Times New Roman font
Please note: Many publications can devote only a small amount of space to book reviews and, as a result, give reviewers very strict limitations upon the length of their reviews. Therefore, please do not allow your review to exceed the length requirement. Part of the challenge of this assignment is to say a lot in a short amount of space. Think about the best way to introduce readers to the entire book in 3 pages of writing.
Objectives:
• to introduce readers to the content, form, and style of the poet’s collection of poems
• to convey the artistic merit of the poems
• to convince readers that the book has value*
* is worth reading (But do not write any explicit statement like, “Buy this book!” You should convince your readers of the quality of the poems in terms of their craft and their ideas.)
How this paper differs from the Poet Laureate Paper:
In book reviews, the purpose is to convince readers to read the book. The book is new and does not have an established place in the world of widely received literature, unlike the work of the US poets laureate whom we previously read in this course. So in a review, it is okay to add statements of value judgment along with interpretation. But even so, like in the other papers, you do not want to rely only on emotion but on analysis of the poet’s strong craft and strong ideas. (Weak: “Poet X is excellent!” Stronger: “Poet X creates very unique metaphors for conveying the strength of a mother’s love for her son.”Then, go on to quote the lines that contain the unique metaphor, following those lines with an explanation of what those lines suggest about the mother’s love for her son.)
Format:
Introduction: Set up a context for the collection by doing research on the poet. For example, is this the poet’s sixth book of poems after a long hiatus? Or is this the poet’s “debut” (i.e. first) collection? Is there some biographical detail from the poet’s life that is helpful for establishing a context for the book? Warning: do not let the entire introduction turn into a biography of the poet. Just give readers only the details that are relevant for understanding the poems in the book. For example, if you learn that the poet’s work experience or travel or death in the family have influenced the subject matter in the book, explain.
Then, to lead us to your thesis statement at the end of the introductionthink about: what has been the reception of the book (or of the poet’s previous work) so far? Include some very brief quotations from other reviewers, so your readers can see how your thesis contributes a new viewpoint to the existing ones. Right after you mention the other reviewers’ thoughts, then state your thesis, showing us how you are adding to (or echoing?) theirs.
End of the introduction/thesis statement: Near or at the end of the first paragraph of your paper, include a “thesis statement” about an overarching idea you find running through the entire book. One way to come up with an overarching idea is to think about the appropriateness or significance of the title of the book. Also, as you read the book in the order that the poems were collected, take notes on recurring images, metaphors, concrete contexts and themes that you find as you read. Think about why the poet is so preoccupied with these images/ideas. Is there some progression of thought to the sequence? Does the attitude toward or treatment of this content change over the course of the book? KEY: Do not simply state a topic(s) as your thesis. A “topic” is just a single word, like “loss.” Be specific. What kind of loss? What is the poet saying ABOUT “loss”? What is the poet’s attitude toward loss? (Weak: “In Book Y, Poet X writes about loss.” Stronger: “In Book Y, Poet X grieves the loss of a spouse and overcomes the emotional and spiritual challenges to find consolation in Z (?) after this loss.”) OR if your book does not have such a tight organizing principle to it, and the poems seem to be about many different kinds of subject matter (e.g. love, death, family, nature, work, faith, social ills, identity, etc. the list is endless), then your thesis might include a brief LIST of a few ideas, and you would devote a body paragraph to each of them. But to form a thesis and not just a list of “topics” find a conceptual thread that runs throughout the book, despite the varied concrete contexts.
Body: I am not going to dictate a specific number of poems that must be included in your paper. You should decide the number that will help you support your thesis. Selection of relevant material is an important part of the writing process for any paper. In general, your paper as whole should examine several poems from the book that support your main idea or ideas in the thesis. Remember that you are trying to convince us of the strength of the poems as poems too, so choose poems where you can show readers that such formal details as images, metaphors are unique and/or that the word choice is exact, for example.
In this paper, rather than writing a full analysis of one poem in each paragraph, you might find that you need to include brief passages from a few poems in a single paragraph if you are trying to show, for example, that a particular idea runs through a number of poems in the book. This method is useful if you find a strong cohesive concept among the poems in the book. On the other hand, you may find that you want to show so much variety of theme or styles in the book that you will need to divide your review into paragraphs for each point, quoting a different poem in each paragraph.
The poet has ordered the poems in the book for a reason! Including thoughts on the following poems in the book will often serve your point about the book as a whole well: (1) the first poem in the book, (2) the last poem, (3) the title poem (i.e. the poem in which the words of the title can be found)* *not all books have a title that can be found within one of the poems in the book, but many do. Also, analyzing these poems is a suggestion, not mandatory. You do want to be sure to quote any poems from the book that support your thesis about the book.
An example for giving a sense of artistic merit would be to point out the poet’s unique use of metaphor. Introduce the metaphor by explaining the point you want to make about it; then quote the lines from the poem that contain the metaphor; then explain why/how it is unique. Does it take a very traditional metaphor and put a unique twist on it so that we think afresh about the concept? Or does the metaphoruse a very unusual concrete object to serve as the vehicle of the abstract concept?
Research: You will definitely need to search for other reviews of this poet’s work, either on the web or even in databases. Remember that these books are quite new, so you might not find reviews in databases yet, but you will be able to find some thoughts on the web, either in online journals or even blogs written by poetry lovers. Read these reviews/blogs with a view toward finding ways you can make a new contribution to what is being written about the book. For example, perhaps no reviewer you’ve found mentions that the poet has a lot of “dog” poems in the collection. (What has happened to the dog? Why is the poet writing about the dog? How has the poet treated this very cliché subject matter with a unique twist? Does the poet appear to be examining the dog’s life/actions with a view toward understanding human life/actions better?) Or perhaps no one has written about a particular attitude you think the poet has toward the subject matter, for example, parenting. Through research, you may also find out some biographical, or even autobiographical, information that would help readers read the poems better. You might even find the poet’s own words about his or her own poems or about poetry in general, for example. It could be a strong method to find statements made by the poet about his or her work (or about the value of poetry in general) and show us how the poet’s words help us understand the poems in the book better.
Some examples of sources for reviews:
• the poet’s own website (for autobiographical information, information about the poet’s earlier publications, links to book reviews)
• amazon.com customer reviews (you should read these so you can aim to say something different)
• reviews of the book in online publications (online literary journals)
• reviews of the book in publications found in databases, such as Academic Search Premier, Literature Resource Center (You might find reviews of a poet’s earlier books, and so you could compare this newer book to older ones.)
Mechanics and Documentation:
• Italicize the title of the book.
• Use quotation marks around the titles of poems and around quoted lines of verse.
• This time, put page numbers in parentheses after the quotations from poems because you need to help readers find the poems in the book.
• Use slash marks to indicate line breaks /
• Use double slash marks to indicate a stanza break / /
• If you quote 4 or more lines of verse, block them.
• Use poet’s full name (from the title page of the book) at first reference and only last name after that.
• Avoid using the second person “you” and “your” anywhere in the paper. Use “readers,” or even “we” is acceptable.
• Do not start your last paragraph with “In conclusion” or “To conclude”
• INTERNAL DOCUMENTATION: If you do use some research material, give the author’s full name and the publication information (title of article and name of website? online journal?) in your sentence. In other words, do not use parenthetical documentation, but instead include all the citation information in the sentence itself. For example: In her review on abcblogspot.com, Jane Smith says “blah, blah, blah.”
Warning: Since you may be moving from poem to poem in this short paper more quickly than you did in the Poet Laureate Paper, please remember to tell the reader the title of the next poem in the sentence in which you shift to it in your paragraph. For example, you might be trying to argue that a mother’s tone toward her son changes throughout the collection. To do this, you might need to quote 3 different poems in the same paragraph to show a shift in the tone from anger to resignation to love. In Poem X, the mother sounds angry; in Poem Y, resigned; in Poem Z, loving.
Works Cited page will include:
1. the book of poems
2. the poet’s website
3. any book reviews that you quote in your paper
PAPER PROPOSAL: due Monday, April 22 (hand me a printed copy at the beginning of class)
Format: 1 page, single line-spaced, 12 pt. Times New Roman font
Please include the following components:
I.full title of the book and author’s full name
II.preliminary thesis statement for your paper, written in full sentence(s)
III.the full titles of several poems (put titles in quotation marks) that you plan to quote in your paper to support your thesis; each title should be accompanied by a brief explanation (2 sentences) of why you think the poem is important to analyze to support your thesis in the review
IV.two (or more) questions you would like to ask the poet during the poetry reading (Write these in full sentences.)
