Comparative Poetry Analysis
Assignment
You will write a 5-paragraph comparative poetry analysis based on two poems of your choice.
You will create a thesis statement regarding the similarities/differences in your two poems, and
then use evidence from each poem to support that thesis. You will be expected to use your
poetry vocabulary to explain your assertion.
Due Date
Your paper, outline, and TPCASTT sheets must be turned in at the end of class on Wednesday,
March 24th. You will have class time for your TPCASTT and your outline March 17th – 18th, and
you will have computer lab time on March 23rd – 24th.
Topics
You will choose between childhood memories, romantic love, or natural imagery. Poems are
attached.
Name:
Date:
Class:
Topic:
Comparative Poetry Analysis Cover Sheet
Please cut this portion of the page off and turn it in with your assignment.
o -5 for no cover sheet at submission
o -5 for no Kentucky Writing Scoring Rubric* (KWSR) at submission
Assignment
TPCASTT
Outline
Paper (w/KWSR in back)
Total Grade
Points
_____/40
_____/20
_____/40
_____/100
*On the paper itself, students will earn 40 points for a “Distinguished”, 35 for a “Proficient”, 30
for an “Apprentice”, and 20 for a “Novice”.
Childhood Memories
“Piano” – D. H. Lawrence
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
“Those Winter Sundays” – Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
Romantic Love
“Sonnet 18” – William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
“Sonnet 30” – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.
Natural Imagery
“Moon Rondeau” – Carl Sandburg
"Love is a door we shall open together."
So they told each other under the moon
One evening when the smell of leaf mould
And the beginnings of roses and potatoes
Came on a wind.
Late in the hours of the evening
They looked long at the moon and called it
A silver button, a copper coin, a bronze wafer,
A plaque of gold, a vanished diadem,
A brass hat dripping from deep waters.
"People like us,
us two,
We own the moon."
“Woman” – Nikki Giovanni
she wanted to be a blade
of grass amid the fields
but he wouldn't agree
to be the dandelion
she wanted to be a robin singing
through the leaves
but he refused to be
her tree
she spun herself into a web
and looking for a place to rest
turned to him
but he stood straight
declining to be her corner
she tried to be a book
but he wouldn't read
she turned herself into a bulb
but he wouldn't let her grow
she decided to become
a woman
and though he still refused
to be a man
she decided it was all
right