Introduction
Congratulations! You have been accepted to help choose the poem for the Advanced Placement Literature
and Composition Test Writing Committee. You are now an official member of the College Board’s
Educational Testing Service. Your job as a committee member will be to help write the A.P. Literature and
Composition Examination poetry essay question for this year’s test.
Your input will help select the poem that will be analyzed by hundreds of thousands of our nation’s top
students on the A.P. Lit examination. These high school students deserve the best effort we can provide,
and we believe that you will be able to contribute significantly to that goal.
Introduction | Task | Process | Resources | Evaluation | Conclusion | Credits
The Task
Your task is to select the poem that will be used for the essay question. You will need to persuade the
other members of your committee that your poem is an excellent choice. You will make a presentation
about the poem you choose to the other members of your committee. Your presentation should do the
following:
1. Explain the message of the poem
2. Illustrate the poet’s use of poetic devices, such as metaphor, personification, hyperbole, alliteration,
rhyme, etc…
3. Indicate the high regard in which the poet is held by the literary community,
4. And acknowledge the poet’s impressive grasp of vocabulary.
The Process
Research poets and poems. Look up unknown words. Get started generally.
1. Select a poet and a poem. Below is a list of suggested poets. This list was compiled based on their
fame, their recognized literary merit, the frequency with which their works are anthologized, and the
abundance of available resources for reference.
Suggested Poets
Maya Angelou (fairly easy to understand)
Matthew Arnold
W.H. Auden
Elizabeth Bishop
William Blake
Robert Bly
Joseph Brodsky
Gwendolyn Brooks
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Robert Browning
George Gordon, Lord Byron
John Ciardi
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Countee Cullen (fairly easy to understand)
E.E. Cummings
Emily Dickinson
John Donne
Paul Laurence Dunbar
George Eliot
Robert Frost (fairly easy to understand)
Thomas Hardy
Seamus Heaney
Robert Herrick
Gerard Manley Hopkins (very difficult poet to understand)
A.E. Housman
Langston Hughes (fairly easy)
Ben Jonson
John Keats
Galway Kinnell
Yusef Komunyakaa
Andrew Marvell
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Czeslaw Milosz
John Milton
Pablo Neruda
Octavio Paz
Sylvia Plath
Edgar Allan Poe (may be easy to understand)
Alexander Pope
Ezra Pound
Theodore Roethke
Christina Georgina Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Ann Sexton
William Shakespeare (failry difficult)
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Wole Soyinka
Wislawa Szymborska (medium to understand)
William Stafford
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Dylan Thomas
Walt Whitman (fairly easy to understand)
Richard Wilbur
William Carlos Williams
William Wordsworth (fairly easy to understand)
William Butler Yeats
2. Use the poetry resources listed below to learn about the life and influences of your poet. Prepare a
section of your presentation that will help you to explain this information to the committee members. You
will want to provide the committee with information that will impart the importance of the poet and justify
his or her selection as the poet featured on the A.P. Literature and Composition Examination. Pay
particular attention to references to the poet’s most significant works. (See #3 under Task)
3. Review the poems of that poet. Look at three different poems by your poet. Look specifically for
poems that are frequently anthologized or referenced by literary critics. Choose carefully because this
poem will be your recommendation for the poem analysis essay portion of next year’s A.P. Literature and
Composition Examination.
4. Read through that poem multiple times. Begin your analysis by identifying all unfamiliar or easily
confused words and providing links to their definitions.
VOCABULARY RESOURCE
Dictionary.com http://www.dictionary.com/
5. Utilize the plethora of poetry resources provided below to learn everything possible about your poem.
Use the poetry terminology notes you’ve collected to identify the poetic devices (figurative language,
rhythm, rhyme scheme, etc.) the poet employs in the poem.
POETRY TERMINOLOGY RESOURCES
All American: Glossary of Literary
Terms http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/general/glossary.htm
Virtual Salt: A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm
c. Look to see if there are any allusions to other works of literature in the poem. For example, there may
be Biblical allusions. Identify these allusions in your poem and link them to explanations of the allusions.
d. Through your reading of the poem and research of the literary criticism, determine the theme or
themes of the poem you’ve selected. Provide links from key details in the poem that are clues to the
themes to explanations of these themes.
POETRY RESOURCES
American Literature–Poetry http://library.scsu.ctstateu.edu/litbib.html#ampoetry
English Literature–Poetry http://library.scsu.ctstateu.edu/litbib.html#enpoetry
HomeworkSpot High School English http://homeworkspot.com/high/english/
HomeworkSpot High School English Poetry http://www.homeworkspot.com/high/english/poetry.htm
The Poetry and Literature Center of the Library of Congresshttp://www.loc.gov/poetry
Introduction to Representative Poetry On-Linehttp://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/
An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to Anthology of Modern American
Poetry http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/
Poetic Devices – Added 11/12
https://owl.writingcenter.tamu.edu/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=70 –
Texas A&M University
http://projects.uwc.utexas.edu/handouts/?q=node/40 – University of Texas
http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072405228/student_view0/poetic_glossary.html – McGraw-Hill
Information about your poet/literary criticism – Added 11/12
http://www.Nytimes.com – New York Times Newspaper (has some information about poets)
http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/guide.html – Internet Public Library Online Literary Criticism
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/index.html – Victorian Web Authors (example – Christina Rossetti
and others)
6. Check your presentation for style, usage, and mechanics issues.
7. Rehearse your presentation until you are familiar with the organization of your analysis. Practice until
you feel comfortable presenting without notes and without reading your text verbatim from the screen.
Remember, the ease with which you present will influence the other committee members as to the
strength of your poem as a potential essay subject, so you will want to be able to discuss it clearly and
intelligently.
Evaluation
Your evaluation will include such things as the following:
How well you used the class time allotted to this assignment.
Did you correctly understand and explain the theme and ideas of your poem?
Did you correctly understand and explain the poetic devices of your poem?
Did you create a well-organized, attractive presentation about your poem?
Did your presentation help your classmates to understand your poem?
Did you present your poem well – in a clear, loud voice, easily understandable?
Did you demonstrate that you knew your poem during your presentation or did you read verbatim from
notes?
Did you follow directions?
Good Luck!
Due Date: 4/22-23
Credit: Tara Roby