“You have utilized the methods of formalism reader response theory and an additional approach to analysis (psychological Marxist cultural) of your choice. Your overall goal no matter the method has been essentially the same: to locate a single overall meaning that seemed prominent in the text and to then show your reader how you arrived that that conclusion (your thesis). For this essay this same overall goal still holds. In analyzing a single poem of your choosing you will similarly be making a claim about a meaning (theme) in the poem. However this time rather than focusing on just one main approach to analysis as you have been so far you may now call upon any and all styles of analysis. For example in a single line of the poem you have chosen to discuss you may find yourself noticing that your own experience helps you to see a particular image as having a particular meaning (a reader response moment) and also in that very same line you may see how the poetic device of alliteration in a word in that line creates a particular emotional effect for readers that contributes to your sense of meaning (a formalist observation). And also in that very same line you may feel that the meaning of that image presented could perhaps be interpreted differently depending on the readers cultural memberships (using a cultural approach to analysis). So all of these various thoughts that you had regarding different aspects of this single line of poetry may each be used separately in different parts of your paper. Now hopefully you can see how a one page poem can inspire a 6-to-8-page essay! More about where you would discuss of these very interesting observations about how meaning below in Important Tips on Organizing.
Task:
Choose one of the poems from the eight that we have read as a class to analyze. Write an essay that is at 6-to-8 pages in which you make a claim as to the overall meaning that is created in that poem. Support that claim with evidence from the poem itself its many different elements (see Oliver text) your experience of those elements and with ideas represented in one or two of the approaches to analyzing literature that you have been exposed to.
Questions to help you come up with a thesis:
If this poem were an essay what would its thesis be?
If this poem were a painting what might its title be? (That title is likely to contain the topic; your job is to turn that topic into a complete sentencewho or what is doing something?)
Who or what seems to be causing what to happen?
Art reflects life. What is this piece of art reflecting about life and how things work?
Important tips for organizing:
While it might at first seem easiest to discuss the poem chronologically (from beginning to end in that order in which it is presented) you are likely find that you will be more effective if you take a different approach since this essay is not about what happens in the poem but rather it should be about HOW meaning is created by the author by your experience by the contexts (psychological historical cultural etc.) in which the poem was written and in which the poem is read. In any essay that you write YOU create your own structure for presenting your ideas to your reader. The order that your essay takes should not necessarily be dictated by the order in which things happen in the poem (and the same goes for short stories novels plays etc.) This does not mean that it never works to walk a reader through from beginning to end but it creates many challenges for an essay writers ability to organize and stay focused him/herself since the different ways that meaning gets created will bounce around so much in any given section of the work.
For example lets say your poem has four stanzas so you say great I will make each stanza a paragraph and go in order from top to bottom. But then you start writing and you realize that in each paragraph you want to discuss how rhyme shapes the meaning of that section. So now you have to discuss rhyme four times rather than once! Readers may appreciate repetition in poetry but not in an essay! Writing concisely is one of the skills that is valued in expository prose. In order to do it you need to be strategic about where and when you discuss your ideas so that you say them once. There is nothing wrong with your first body paragraph having examples from the last line in the poem really! Your reader will stay with you on this because in that paragraph you discussed one topic and one topic only and you discussed that topic thoroughlythis is much better than just touching on something here and there and here and therethat sort of chaos leaves the reader with a lot of work do to try to keep things straight. What if a teacher walked into a classroom and taught you that way?! When you are writing essays you are teaching your reader. Your organization clarity and thoroughness are key.
Additional Suggestions in How to Approach this Task:
As you read and re-re-re-re-re-read the poem that you have chosen to discuss in your essay consider alternative choices that might have been made by the poet; ask yourself why you think the writer those that which he/she did in that particular moment of the poem. But also take breaks from this close analysis and let yourself experience the overall whole of the poem. Doing this will help you gain greater insight as to the overall meaning that was achieved I in the poem as meaning in poetry is created through the senses. You need to be in the right space as a reader to receive the sensory information. Certainly read the poem out loud. Read it at different times of the day. Print it out bring it with you. Read it in different settings. Enjoy this process. Try to get interested in it. Students often find they learn things about themselves other people and the world as they do such close readings.
I buried my father
in the sky.
Since then the birds
clean and comb him every morning
and pull the blanket up to his chin
every night.
I buried my father underground.
Since then my ladders
only climb down
and all the earth has become a house
whose rooms are the hours whose doors
stand open at evening receiving
guest after guest.
Sometimes I see past them
to the tables spread for a wedding feast.
I buried my father in my heart.
Now he grows in me my strange son
my little root who wont drink milk
little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night
little clock spring newly wet
in the fire little grape parent to the future
wine a son the fruit of his own son
little father I ransom with my life.
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