The Brief: Choose three poems or three songs that have similar purposes and perform a close reading on your choices to argue the poet’s goals OR compare two poems and two songs based on a unifying theme and similar or different author’s goals.
The Purpose: Demonstrate your ability to interpret a poem or song and an author’s purpose by performing a close reading. By analyzing the texts and synthesizing your understanding of the texts for the reader through close reading, you demonstrate innate and specific connections of the poems and songs with their imagery and emotional goals. It is significant that academic critical thinking considers the impact of a singular word or phrase as just as important as the whole text, so exploring figurative language and sensory details helps us become even more attuned to understanding. Remember to embrace your confusion and uncertainty by testing new ideas and trying out responses. No essay is perfect on the first draft, and no poem or song is understood in the first read-through!
The Setup: Poetry is, in and of itself, misleading; a brief poem, though seemingly simple, could be the result of months of labor dedicated to choosing images, descriptions, and forms that accurately express an idea or emotion. A powerful work of poetry gives the reader an unexplained urge to know more and read again. Often, to supplement that desire for more emotional impact, readers turn to lyric and song, though much could be said of the lyricism of some poetry. Poets from the Harlem Renaissance to today write from a position of cultural expression as Americans, Africans, Caribbeans, or other nationalities. Their efforts gave life to the understanding of daily existence for black Americans and helped frame a future for other black writers. This coincides with the poetry from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, where writers approached adjustment to American life and revolutionary change both at home and in America. These poets expressed feelings of self-hood and identity in a country that attempted to reject their existence. In the 21st century, nominal rapper Kendrick Lamar changed the tone, tenor, and possibilities of rap music with releases good kid, m.A.A.d city, To Pimp a Butterfly, DAMN., and Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, all featuring criticism and realization of life in America for black men and women, employing religion, history, and personal reflection to make his claims. While all with their own merits, DAMN. went on to earn the first-ever Pulitzer Prize in music for a rap artist and established cultural significance for the genre and Lamar.
The Prompt: For this essay, I would like you to perform a close reading of select poetry provided to you. You may choose to complete EITHER of the following tasks:
Analyze three (3) poems from either the African American collection OR the Latinx/Chicanx section of the poetry packet OR three (3) songs by Kendrick Lamar. Explore further how their themes inform the context from which they came and the deeper meaning of the poems/songs in relation to specific language choices and use of figurative language and sensory details.
OR
Analyze and compare two (2) poems from either the African American poets OR the Latinx/Chicanx poets, to two (2) Kendrick Lamar songs. Analyze and explain how your poems and Lamar’s songs are similar and different, and what, if any, influences you see from a poet to Lamar. Examine through comparison what the significance of the poems/songs is and how cross-cultural ideas are shared.
Possibly consider the following questions to help frame your essay in a specific focus (Note: you are not required to answer all, if any, of these questions):
What are the implications of the poetry you selected in relation to their context?
Do poets tend to share themes even from different time periods in the 20th century?
How do both the poetry and Lamar employ poetic devices to make their point (imagery, metaphor, theme, sensory details, figurative language)?
What issues arise from the more hyper-sexualized and misogynistic elements of Lamar’s text? How are these addressed in poetry?
Is it possible Lamar is inspired by any of these poems? If so, how?
Optionally, employ a maximum of TWO outside secondary sources in your essay to identify the cultural, historical, and biographical context of the poets and Lamar, as well as how certain poetic devices could impact their works. Be sure these secondary sources are academic (meaning you found them from an academic source via the Library page and not LitCharts or SparkNotes or Genius or any other non-academic site).
The Guidelines for Submission: This essay must be typed in MLA format (12-point font, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, black ink text) and 1200 words minimum. You will need to provide a word count at the end of your final draft, as well as appropriate in-text citations and a Works Cited page (with at least your primary source on it!). Any essays that do not meet the minimum word count requirement will be penalized.
The Criteria: Your essay will be evaluated in rubric form on the basis of the following:
Content – Responding clearly to the prompt, providing supporting details, clearly articulating the primary focus/theme of the essay, and considering your audience in your academic writing.
Organization – Providing a clear and singular introduction paragraph that includes a clearly identifiable thesis claim, and framing this with a clear and singular conclusion paragraph at the end. These paragraphs should be even in scale (4-5 sentences for each). Body paragraphs should be logical and focused structurally (while I highly recommend the TAXES model, it is not required for the structure) with a clear and unique topic supporting your thesis claim, specific and focused examples, and clear explanations for each point.
Style – The essay follows the provided style (literary analysis, drama analysis, poetry analysis, etc.) and considers word choice in focusing on that style. Keywords related to the text are used in a specific and effective fashion, and the overall tone of the essay is appropriately academic for our class.
Format – The essay follows all MLA guidelines as provided to the class, including in-text citations throughout the draft and a properly formatted works cited page.
Any reference you can find would be helpful.
