Reference no: EM131726152

• Compare and contrast some of the poems from this week's readings or the poet you selected for part 1 of the forum. You may compare poems from a single poet, or compare poems across poets. Have a debatable, persuasive claim and focus on specific points of comparison, using the Lesson in week 7 to guide your structure.

Submission Instructions:

Your essays should be in MLA Style and approximately 1000-1200 words, not including the Work(s) Cited page. Meeting the minimum word requirement makes you eligible for a C grade. Meeting the maximum word requirements makes you eligible for an A grade. As with most academic writing, this essay should be written in third person. Please avoid both first person (I, we, our, etc.) and second person (you, your).

In the upper left-hand corner of the paper, place your name, the professor's name, the course name, and the due date for the assignment on consecutive lines. Double space your information from your name onward, and don't forget a title. All papers should be in Times New Roman font with 12-point type with one-inch margins all the way around your paper. All paragraph indentations should be indented five spaces (use the tab key) from the left margin. All work is to be left justified. When quoting lines in literature, please research the proper way to cite short stories, plays, or poems.

Should you choose to use outside references for prompt one or two, these must be scholarly, peer-reviewed sources obtained via the APUS library (select Advanced Search and check the Peer Reviewed box). Reliable open web sources may be used for prompt three. Be careful that you don't create a "cut and paste" paper of information from your various sources. Your ideas are to be new and freshly constructed. Also, take great care not to plagiarize.

7 Lesson

The Initial Reading:

1. Scan the text for the nonfiction text features: title, date, author, headings, subheadings, pictures, graphs, bold print, etc.

o This is done to help you get an overview of what you will come across when you actually begin to read for understanding.

o Scan any headings or subheadings for a sense of progression of the development of key points.

2. Read the first paragraph (or section for a longer essay). Then, read the conclusion.

o Identify what seem to be key concepts introduced in the opening of the essay and those concepts that have been emphasized or that have emerged in the conclusion.

3. With a pen in hand, begin reading the essay from the beginning, marking in your notes or on the printed page the main ideas as you see them appearing.

4. From your list of main ideas, annotated in the margins of each paragraph and copied to a separate page or note card, try to reconstruct mentally the main ideas of each paragraph.

5. Identify key passages that you may wish to use as direct quotations, paraphrases, summaries, or allusions in the drafts of an essay.

Identifying the Authors Purpose:

As you are pre-reading, reading for the first time, or reading for the fourth time, you might find that you have come across something new that you didn't catch the first time. It is helpful to ask yourself questions as you read so that you have a better idea of the author's purpose, which will, in turn, lead to better comprehension of the text.

• Is the purpose of the essay to inform, persuade, entertain, or to explore?

• What is the conclusion of any argument the author may be developing?

• As an informational work, is the author's voice prominent or muted? Be sure that you understand the writer's viewpoint and purpose:

o Is the writer trying to explain his or her own opinion? Trying to attack another's position? Trying to examine two sides of an issue without judgment?

o Is the writer being persuasive or just commenting on or describing a unique, funny, or interesting aspect of life and what it ‘says about us'?

• As a piece of entertainment, what specific literary humorous devices does the author employ? (See burlesque, hyperbole, understatement, other figures of speech.)

• As an exploratory work, what is the focus of the inquiry? What is the author's relationship to that focus? Is she or he supportive, hostile, indifferent?

Analysis of the Author:

When analyzing the author, this is another way to analyze their craft. Maybe they portray an idea in such a way that has obvious bias.

Maybe they are trying to stay open-minded to the ideas. Ask yourself these questions (or consider these prompts) as you read:

• Explain the author's attitude toward the subject of the essay. Is she or he sympathetic to the thesis, issue, or key concepts?

• Explore on the Internet and other electronic or print media any information you can find about the author and the essay. Explain how this external information better helps to understand the essay.

• Explain what seems to be the author's motivation in writing the essay and what she or he hopes to accomplish with the composition.

• Identify any other factors in the author's biography or notes that seem relevant to the purpose of the composition.

Reading and Writing about Poetry

• Like novels, poems can be analyzed as singular events, or they can be compared/contrasted in a broader conversation. You might look at multiple works from the same author, works featuring the same themes, works with the same image pattern, or works in the same genre (lyrics, elegies, etc.)

There are lots of options. When asked to analyze poetry try to think of a persuasive thesis ( an opinion), then brainstorm at least three forms of evidence to help you construct the body paragraphs. When writing a compare/contrast, you want to think of your three forms of 'evidence' instead as your 'three points of comparison'.

• A poetry analysis, then, might have thesis statement like this:

• "Although "Traveling Through the Dark" by William Stafford uses the same situation as Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," it presents a view of humanity and nature that is far more bleak."

• I would then construct the body of the paper to explore and discuss the ways in which the two poems differ. I could have said:

• "Traveling Through the Dark" by William Stafford uses imagery of birth and death to imagine a world in which human beings are like the cruel gods of Greek mythology, deciding the fate of others arbitrarily."

• The evidence I choose to support my opinion helps me to structure my piece, no matter what the evidence is.

Compare and Contrast Writing:

• If I'm comparing/contrasting, I might think of two subjects and then three ways to compare/contrast them, my "points of comparison." I would then, most likely, structure the body of my paper like this:

• Intro with thesis

1st body paragraph: Setting: discuss both poems and how they treat the physical setting of the poem.

• 2nd body paragraph: Imagery: discuss the particular images employed in each poem.

3rd body paragraph: Theme: discuss how the first two elements create a thematic statement in each poem.

• Then I would conclude.

This is called a point-by-point arrangement and can be applied to any compare and contrast assignment, whether you are examining movies, poems, generals, disease treatment protocols, presidents, graduate schools, etc.

Poem's to choose from:

Choose 2 or 3 of these poems to compare and contrast.

• Sharon Olds "First Thanksgiving"
"Still Life in Landscape"
"After Making Love in Winter"
"The Planned Child"
Linda Pastan "A Rainy Country"
"I am Learning to Abandon the World"
"The Obligation to Be Happy"
"Why Are Your Poems so Dark?"
Larry Levis: "Signs"
"To a Wren on Calvary"
"Winter Stars"