ENGL 340 Poetry | Gregory Eiselein | Fall 2005Paper on FormBasic Assignment. Select one of the following poems.Sidney, Astrophil and Stella #52, 216-17Shakespeare, Sonnet 129, 267Dickinson, 620 (435), 1121Dunbar, "Sympathy," 1224Roethke, "Elegy for Jane," 1499Bishop, "One Art," 1527-28Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays," 1533Walcott, "A Far Cry from Africa," 1820Komunyakaa, "Sunday Afternoons," 1951-52Duffy, "Warming Her Pearls," 2007Write a 3-5 page paper that provides a specific explanation of the relationship betweenthe poem's meaning and its form. Your task is to write a paper that discusses some of thepoem's formal elements—its rhythms, rhymes and sounds, tone, diction, structure andorganization, figurative language, and so on—in relation to the poem's meaning and yourunderstanding of the poem as a whole).Key Dates to NoteSept 28 W Bring to class a one-paragraph, typed description of your paper idea.Oct 7 F Paper on form is due.Explanation of What-I'm-Really-Looking-ForThe purpose of this assignment is two-fold. First, it is an exercise designed to help you teachyourself how a poem's meaning and its form are related. Second, this writing assignmentprovides you with an opportunity to articulate and defend your own interpretation of a poem.In other words, I will not read your papers to see if you came up with the poem's 'one true'meaning. Instead, I will be looking for three things:1. Can you discuss the connection between the poem's meaning and its form?2. Can you explain in a clear and persuasive manner your interpretation of the poem?3. Can you support your interpretation with well-chosen direct references to the poem itself?Some Questions to Get You StartedAfter you've read and re-read your poem carefully, try asking yourselves these questions:1. Think about the formal elements of poetry: persona, tone, diction, connotation, rhythm andmeter, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, verse form (like sonnet, villanelle, ode, etc.), figurativelanguage, metaphor, metonymy, personification, irony, and so on. Do any of these elementsreinforce the poem's meaning? If so, how do these formal features reinforce the poem's meaning?2. How are (any of) these elements related to the poem as a whole? What is the poem's primaryorganizing principle? How is the poem structured? Is it a unified poem or a fragmented one?3. What issues or questions does the poem raise? Does the poem's structure or formal featuresresolve any of those issues?4. Are there any tensions or contradictions between what the poem says and how the poem saysit? If so, how would you explain that tension or contradiction?Writing AdviceYou will want to start by reading and re-reading your poem carefully. Read it several times. Readit aloud. Take notes on it. Take notes that summarize the gist of each stanza.You don't have to time to write about every formal feature of the poem; so you'll need to focusyour attention. Choose carefully those formal elements that you do write about. Develop a thesis,a central claim, around which you can structure your discussion. Decide what you want youraudience to know about the poem. Think of everyone in this classroom as your audience. Thinkabout how to persuade them to see the poem and its form the way that you do. Then organizeyour discussion of the poem accordingly.Plan to compose a rough draft and to revise, revise, revise. Write clearly. Edit and proofreadcarefully. Argue your case convincingly by supplying well-chosen examples accompanied by clear,persuasive, reasoned analysis. Supply a title that indicates what your essay is about. Above all,enjoy the poem you choose.Help!At http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/general/gl_lit.html (I'll post this link to our coursewebsite), you can find some online help for writing about literature. You can find a copy of thisassignment and our other course materials at our course website: http://www.k-state.edu/english/eiselei/engl340/index.html . As always, you are welcome to drop by my office (ECS 108C) to talkabout your paper. I have office hours for this class on Mondays and Fridays at 10:30 andThursdays from 9:00 to 10:30, but I am easy to reach at other times as well. If my office hours arenot convenient for you, lets set up an appointment.Technical InformationType and double-space your paper. Put your name, the course name/number, the assignmentname/number, and the date in the upper left hand corner of your paper. When quoting poetry,reproduce the lines exactly as the poet arranged them. Indicate the end of the printed line ofpoetry with a spaced slash [ / ]. For example: "There she stands / As if alive" (lines 46-47). Whenquoting more than two or three lines, set off the quotation by indentation; quotation marks arenot necessary in block quotations. For example:The Soul selects her own Society--Then--shuts the Door--To her divine Majority--(lines 1-3)As in the example above, use line numbers to indicate from where in the poem you've taken thequotation. For this assignment, there is no need to cite page numbers or the anthology title. I willsimply assume that you are using the poem as printed in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5thedition. This assignment requires neither research at the library nor consultation ofany poetry criticism. Nevertheless, if you do use the ideas or interpretations or insights ofanother reader or critic in your paper, make certain you acknowledge precisely where you gotthose ideas or interpretations or insights. Use the format outlined by the MLA Handbook forWriters of Research Papers, 6th edition, by Joseph Gibaldi. You can find this book at the K-SateUnion or the library; the library also provides a single sheet handout that explains the MLAformat for citation of work by