Directions:
Choose one poet from each group
Select one essay prompt from the options below those groups and identify which prompt you are answering or you will lose points.
Write 1400-1700 words (excluding header, title, and WC list) in your response.
Your essay must quote abundantly from the poems/poets you have selected. Remember, SHOW what you are saying as EVIDENCE. Do not merely tell me about the poems.
Do not spend time on biography. Analyze the primary texts to support your focused thesis.
Do not allow quotes to speak for You assert your ideas and understandings and then use the quotes to support what you are trying to SHOW me.
Create a unique title for your essay.
Supply an MLA Works Cited list and use MLA formatting to set up your essay.
Use the poems in our folders. Do not go outside for other poems by the poets you have chosen.
You are to use a scholarly tone and diction (i.e. no first or second person voice).
Prompts from which to choose ONE:
You are a reporter covering a huge conference of Modern American poets in a waystation after death (but before the afterlife). This conference is called the After Life Waystation Poetry Conference. The poets are arranged so that ONE poet from each of the above groups is selected as a representative of Modernism. They gather at a table to address the audience of their fellow poets and English majors to discuss how their unique poetic voices and philosophies speak for the Modern period. Each poet, therefore, talks about one or two of their poems as an example of American Literary Modernism using poetic terms and literary devices/skills.
We learned in the first half of our course that Dickinson said: “Poetry is something that takes the top of your head off.” Considering her definition of poetry, select one poet from each group above and explain/SHOW how Dickinson’s definition works with one or two (no more) of each poet’s poems. As such, you are going to have to define your understanding of Dickinson’s quote in the first place. Your main focus, however, are the poems you are explicating.
You are a successful bartender at a gritty, underground bar in NYC. One poet from each group above enters, takes a stool at the bar, orders a drink and a meal, and engages in a heated but literary argument with each other about whose poetry is the most effective representation of Modernism. What does each poet say about their poetry, referring specifically to lines from at least one (but no more than two) of their poems? You may write this as an essay as if you are overhearing this argument or as a dialog/skit using first person in the voices of the two poets. If you choose to use this dialogue format, be sure to use quotation marks and identify who is speaking to whom. Do not simply write long blocks of text or monologues. This task requires interaction and conversation.
Group one: Hart Crane “The Bridge”
Group two: Elizabeth Bishop “One Art” or ” The Fish” choose only one.
