Introduction to Lit/Comp
Spring
Poetry Project
DUE: Thurs 1/21 (periods 1 and 3)
Fri 1/22 (period 6)
This assignment is your chance to explore poetry in both an academic and a creative sense. Your task
will be to research one of the poets on the following list – ONLY ONE POET PER STUDENT. After
researching the poet, you will find/choose three of his/her poems to explicate using the strategies
discussed in class (TWIST).
Once you have chosen the three poems and analyzed them using the strategies, you will write one welldeveloped paragraph for each poem discussing the elements in the strategy, and coming up with a theme
for the poem. Use the strategies to “prove” your theme.
As a creative element, choose one of the three poems you discussed to model. Write an original poem
following the patterns, rhyme scheme, mood, rhythm, and structure of the poet. Feel free to “borrow” a
line from the poem as an homage to the original poet. Your poem should also include simile or metaphor,
personification, and imagery.
POETS TO CHOOSE: Click on your chosen poet – each poet is a link to that poet’s page on
poets.org. You will see a brief biography (please read), and links to some of the poet’s texts.
Explore the poems before choosing the three you will use. If the poet does not have three poems at
this website, feel free to explore outside of the site (internet, poetry anthologies, etc.)
LIST OF POETS:
1.Langston Hughes
2. Robert Frost
3. E. E. Cummings
4. William Carlos Williams
5.
Sylvia Plath
6. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
7. T. S. Eliot
8. Gwendolyn Brooks
9. W. H.
Auden
10. W. B. Yeats
11. William Wordsworth 12. Pablo Neruda
13. Robert
Browning
14. Elizabeth Bishop
15. Dylan Thomas
16. Wallace Stevens
17. Federico
García Lorca
18. John Keats
19. Carl Sandburg
20. Claude McKay
21. John Milton 22.
Billy Collins
23. Nikki Giovanni
24. Gary Soto
25. Charles Simic
26. Elizabeth
Alexander
27. Allen Ginsberg
28. Naomi Shihab Nye
29. Rita Dove
30. Edna St.
Vincent Milay
31. Kay Ryan