Paper #1 due Friday, February 18

Your main task is to write an essay that explains how "the theme of the work is being imagined" through the formal elements of the written text (to use Helen Vendler's phrase).  What are the symbolic objects in the poem and how to they develop its symbolic imagination, its point of view about its subject? As Auden asked, as a verbal contraption, how does your poem work?  What is its plot and how does the theme develop through that plot and the formal elements of the poem?

These formal elements include various types of the figurative language we've discussed (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche), diction, alliteration, various types of rhyme, changes in register, language that draws attention to itself, patterns of similarity and contrast, etc.  You need not discuss meter, unless you feel comfortable doing so.  Avoid biographical criticism.

In writing the paper, I recommend that you use the new specialized vocabulary we have been using in class, and consider carefully the speaker and the rhetorical situation of the poem (who is being addressed? in what register?).\

NOTE: please put your names only the back of your paper, not on the back page, but on the back of the last page.

Strategy Tip #1: First, work through the poem following our 10 tips in order.

Strategy Tip #2: In preparing to write, work through the poem line by line, taking notes on each line, as Vendler models for you.  Look up words, note etymologies, write questions for yourself, note observations, no matter how initially unpromising.

Strategy Tip #3: When you actually write the paper, don't work through the poem line by line.  Instead, organize your observations around moments in the poem that seem like good places to start.  Note the examples of writing in the Vendler handout and in "Organization Checklist" of papers that begin with the beginning of a poem, the end of a poem, the middle of a poem, or with a particular feature or moment of a poem.

The length of the paper will depend on the complexity of your poem and your argument, but it would be difficult to give a satisfactory account of your poem in fewer than 3 pages.  Aim for a range between 4-5 pages.  If you write a page or two more, that is fine.

Workshoppers will email their drafts to me by 10AM of the due date.  I will make copies for everyone in class.  During class, workshoppers will read their papers aloud and then solicit comments from their colleagues.