Analytic Essay
Your best work for this class has combined close observation of evidence with a coherent narrative about how the poem works and produces meaning; anyone could read such an essay and feel they have heard new layers of meaning that give the work more resonance and make experiencing it more satisfying and engaging. That’s really how to think about the work of writing about poetry: be a welcoming and trustworthy guide to other readers.
This essay focuses on one of the poems we’ve read this month—your choice—with one additional element.
For essays on either flavor of this assignment, please provide a title that is not the title of the poem, but gives some idea of your interpretation, the questions you address, or what you find most interesting about the work.
The essay should be 4 pages (roughly 1000 words).
A: Frost, “Birches”; Hughes, “Harlem”; Cohen, “Lit”; Pardlo, “Double Dutch”; Jess, work from “Olio”; Trethewey, “Incident.”
For essays about the poems in A, I’d like you to incorporate something that the poet has said about poetry in general, or his or her work in particular, that seems useful or relevant to you in understanding the poem. If you’re working on Olio, you may have notes of your own. For the other poets, try these resources:
Frost
- Frost, Robert. “Comment on Birches.” [preview with Google Books]
- “Education by Poetry,” Amherst Alumni Council address, November 15, 29.
Hughes
Jess
- “Breaking Bubbles.”
- “Cave Canems 20th Anniversary,” a background on an organization that formed a “home for black poetry.”
- On syncopated sonnets at TedXNashville.
Pardlo
- “The Language is Constructing our Ideas More Than We are Deploying the Language”, an interview with Gregory Pardlo in which he talks about improvisation vs. form, April, 2017.
- Interview with Gregory Pardlo, July 10, 2015; Pardlo talks about the role of conventions and talks about the idea of the “difficult” poem.
- More interviews on Pardlo’s website.
Cohen
- “Contributer Interview: Andrea Cohen (2011),” Cohen on humor, influences, diction, and more.
Clifton
- “Poetry Breaks: What Poetry Is.”
- “Poetry Breaks: Where Ideas Come From.”
- A 2007 interview with Mosaic.
Trethewey
- On metaphorical language and more.
- On geography and the American South.
- On the “ruthlesseness” of viewing the world as a poet, as well as the role of photography.
- On photography and more.
- On repetition and the layering of images.
B: Lowell, “For the Union Dead”; Pardlo, “For Which It Stands.”
For essays about the two poems above, I’d like you to incorporate information about a couple of the poem’s important allusions (condensed references to external places, events, texts, and so on), for which a more complete understanding of something briefly referenced in the poem expands our understanding of what it says. This is one of the only times I will encourage you to use Google, at least as a place to start!
