Directions: For each of these four poems you WILL NOT be writing the complete essay. You WILL BE
annotating and writing an outlining for all four.
1.
Read the prompt of the essay and see what literary techniques need to be found throughout
the poem.
2. You will annotate/color mark the entire poem for all the techniques and others you find
necessary. (Theme is ALWAYS necessary!)
3. You will then create a detailed outline for the essay that includes a thesis statement and PEE
(point, evidence, and explanation) for all your paragraphs.
Example/Paragraph # 1
In the novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Dorian’s emotional instability is depicted
through the use of syntax, diction, motif and appearance vs. reality. THESIS
Point: motif of portrait represents his decaying soul
Evidence: “It taught him to love his own beauty, would it teach him to loathe his own soul?”
Explanation: The motif of the picture exemplifies Dorian’s vain attempt to keep the picture’s beauty
intact, while allowing his soul to bear the burden of his sins.
Point: Syntax denotes Dorian’s indecisiveness over Sibyl’s death.
Evidence: “Cruelty! Had he been cruel? It was the girl’s fault, not his.”
Explanation: Dorian exhibits his emotional instability, regarding Sibyl Vane’s death, with the constant
shift in syntax from question marks to exclamation points. The exclamatory phrase of “Cruelty!” and the
juxtaposition of the question “Had he been cruel,” shows Dorian’s surprise along with his overall
confusion as to his treatment of Sibyl the night before.
REPEAT FOR PARAGRAPH # 2 (NOTE: SOME PARAGRAPHS MAY HAVE MORE THAN ONE TECHNIQUE)
NOTE: THIS PACKET WILL BE COLLECTED UPON
CAPTAIN WOLF’S RETURN, SO MAKE SURE IT IS
COMPLETED AND NOT COPIED OR YOU WILL
RECEIVE ZEROS FOR ALL OF IT! DUE DATE IS MARCH
30TH AND 31ST.
1
In each of the following poems, written about seventy years apart, the speaker comments on the
phenomenon of forgetfulness. Read the poems carefully and then, in a well-organized essay, summarize
each speaker’s thoughts and analyze how the tone, imagery, sentence structure, or other poetic
elements help to convey each speaker’s state of mind.
Forgetfulness
Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless, -A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.
Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, -- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white, -- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.
I can remember much forgetfulness.
Harold Hart Crane
Forgetfulness
By Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
2
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
3
Read the following poem carefully, paying particular attention to the personalities of the two neighbors.
Then write well-organized essay in which you explain how the speaker conveys not only the differences
between himself and his neighbor but the implications of those differences. You may wish to include
analysis of such poetic elements such as diction, tone, figurative language, and imagery, among others.
Mending Wall
Robert Frost, 1874 - 1963
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.'
4
Carefully read the following poem. Then, in a well-organized essay discuss the techniques the poet uses
to convey is attitude toward the character in the poem. You may wish to analyze the poet’s use of
imagery, choice of details, and tone, among other poetic elements.
Determination
By Stephen Dobyns
Cabbage—the first word put down
with his new pen, a trophy pen,
like a trophy wife, not cheap,
absurd to use a ballpoint pen
for a task like this, a challenge,
for which he’d also bought a new,
but ancient, rolltop desk recently
restored, with matching chair,
also not cheap, and for which he’d
renovated the attic room with
pine-panelled walls, bookshelves,
and good light for his new office
or weekend office, a place planned
for many years, even before college,
back in high school in fact, a resolve
rare in his life, but about which
he’d dreamed in free moments
at his office, and which kept him
sane during those tedious years
of doing the taxes of strangers,
but now at last begun, excitingly
begun, as he leaned forward with
pen raised to put down on paper
the first word of his first novel.
5
Read the following sonnet carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze the techniques the poet
uses to develop the dramatic structure in the poem. Comment on the title, tone, figurative language,
rhythm, or any other appropriate poetic elements.
Since There's No Help
Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.
Michael Drayton
6