write a 4 page essay on the 2 poems
INSTRUCTIONS
In the following page (posted under this one under papers), you see two poems, one written by a former student of an English professor and one written by a former English professor about a student. Both narrators see a little bit of themselves in the person they are writing about.
Your job in this short paper is to give a close reading of both of these poems. You must, however, write ONE unified essay and not two separate parts so you will need to have a unifying thesis statement. You must consider all aspects of the poems and address them fully with specific textual examples. Please make sure you cover the following:
• Voice
•
Situation and Setting
• Theme
• Tone
• Language Choice
• Imagery
• Figurative Language
• Sound patterns and rhyme
• Internal /External Structure
Your task in this paper is to use the close reading as a way to discover what the narrator thinks about the professor (in the first poem) and the student (in the second poem) and why. You will not find analyses of these poems on line nor are you expected to work together. Please submit on CANVAS.
Poetry Close Reading Paper
In the following page (posted under this one under papers), you see two poems, one written by a former student of an English professor and one written by a former English professor about a student. Both narrators see a little bit of themselves in the person they are writing about.
Your job in this short paper is to give a close reading of both of these poems. You must, however, write ONE unified essay and not two separate parts so you will need to have a unifying thesis statement. You must consider all aspects of the poems and address them fully with specific textual examples. Please make sure you cover the following:
• Voice
• Situation and Setting
• Theme
• Tone
• Language Choice
• Imagery
• Figurative Language
• Sound patterns and rhyme
• Internal /External Structure
Your task in this paper is to use the close reading as a way to discover what the narrator thinks about the professor (in the first poem) and the student (in the second poem) and why. You will not find analyses of these poems on line nor are you expected to work together. Please submit on CANVAS.
Rubric
Poetry Close Reading Paper
Poetry Close Reading Paper
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1.0 pts |
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2.0 pts |
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5.0 pts |
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2.0 pts |
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3.0 pts |
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2.0 pts |
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Total Points: 15.0 |
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Poem #1
The Kid Poets by Joseph Meredith
Ten years ago I sat cringing in a chair
across from you. Now you call me confrere.
You were fifty then. I was just a kid
who’d given you some poems. The thunder in the air
was partly your old railroad watch hid
in a storm of papers on your desk. I’d have fled
into the drizzling afternoon, given half a chance,
to calm my thundering heart. But then you did
the kindest thing: your hand danced a little dance
finding a rhythm you said was more than happenstance
in one of my “things.” In the air between your face
and my face, the thunder died. Only a quick glance
out the window convinced me you could not chase
the storm away, could not, by gesture, replace
cloud with sun, only turn a life around.
And all by a movement of pure masculine grace.
Now you are sixty; each rumble of the watch is more profound.
And my paternal stoop will in time pull me to the ground.
But still they come to you daily, the kid poets,
waiting outside your office, tight-lipped, without a sound.
Poem#2
Poem for Christian, My Student By Gail Mazur
He reminds me of someone I used to know,
but who? Before class,
he comes to my office to shmooze,
a thousand thousand pointless interesting
speculations. Irrepressible boy,
his assignments are rarely completed,
or actually started. This week, instead
of research in the stacks, he’s performing
with a reggae band that didn’t exist last week.
Kids danced to his music
and stripped, he tells me gleefully,
high spirit of the street festival.
He’s the singer, of course—
why ask if he studied an instrument?
On the brink of graduating with
an engineering degree (not, it turned out,
his forte), he switched to English,
his second language. It’s hard to swallow
the bravura of his academic escapes
or tell if the dark eyes laugh with his face.
Once, he brought me a tiny persimmon
he’d picked on campus; once, a poem
about an elderly friend in New Delhi
who left him volumes of Tagore
and memories of avuncular conversation.
My encouragement makes him skittish—
it doesn’t suit his jubilant histrionics
of despair. And I remember myself
shrinking from enthusiasm or praise,
the prospect of effort-drudgery.
Success—a threat. A future, we figure,
of revision—yet what can the future be
but revision and repair? Now, on the brink
again, graduation’s postponed, the brilliant
thesis on Walker Percy unwritten.
“I’ll drive to New Orleans and soak
it up and write my paper in a weekend,”
he announces in the Honors office.
And, “I want to be a bum in daytime
and a reggae star at night!”
What could I give him from my life
or art that matters, how share
the desperate slumber of my early years,
the flashes of inspiration and passion
in a life on hold? If I didn’t fool
myself or anyone, no one could touch
me, or tell me much . . . This gloomy
Houston Monday, he appears at my door,
so sunny I wouldn’t dare to wake him
now, or say it matters if he wakes at all.
“Write a poem about me!” he commands,
and so I do.
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