Overview: This project consists of a collection of poems which you will close read and analyze; as well as a poem of your own which you will create. Your first goal is to find meaningful poems, shine a spotlight on their best attributes, then describe them in a way that effectively conveys their meaning and value. Your second goal is to create a poem of your own that has a similar style, theme, or both to one or more of the poems you analyzed.
Academic Objective:I will evaluate a series of poems through close analysis and create a meaningful poem that emulates a similar style or theme.
Instructions: In order to optimize your grade on this project, you must carefully read, understand, and follow all of the steps below.
Step 1 -Find three poems that "speak" to you in a meaningful way. For this you may use scholarly, credible poetry websites, look through an anthology of poetry from a library or bookstore, or you may want to look through your online textbook to see if you like the poems there. Again, you want to find poems that have enough material that you can analyze for deeper meaning, as well as discuss the attributes you admire about the poem. Be sure you save the poems by copying them into a document; or you may print and scan them, then save them in a way that allows you to make annotations and type your abstract on the same page as each poem. You may only have one poem per page.
Step 2- Read each poem carefully, taking note of your emotional reaction to different parts of the poem, your thoughts, and your observations about what the speaker of the poem is trying to convey. In other words, close read and annotate! Your annotations should be such that they will help you have enough information to write your abstract for each poem.
Step 3- Below each poem, write an abstract (big picture). Most abstracts include the following types of information: something interesting about the author and/or why the poem is significant, or why they wrote it; the theme or "big picture" of the poem; a few insightful and analytical sentences about the poem. In these analytical statements is where you will also reflect on your thoughts or feelings about the poem. Remember to state your reflections, opinions, and observations as though they are facts - no need to write 'I think/feel/believe.'
Step 4- Choose one or more of the poems and write a poem of your own with a similar style, length, structure, and theme. The more thought and effort you put into your poem, the better your grade will be.
Additional Requirements:
- If you type the poems yourself, you must include capitalization, punctuation, and line breaks exactly as the poet originally wrote them.
- Everything typed must be in Times New Roman 12pt font.
- Poems must be titled unless they were written without a title, in which case you would title them by their first line (or a shortened version of the first line).
- At the beginning or the end of each poem, you must have the author's name and year of publication.
- You will have only one poem and one abstract per page.
- Abstracts must be written with correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and information. Double and triple check your work!
- Submit all four pieces of this project together in a document that is uploaded into Canvas. You may not submit a picture with your phone.