Writing Assessment--Poetry Commentary
Read the poem below and write a Poetry Commentary essay explaining the author’s purposes
and themes by analyzing the literary devices, imagery, motifs, and language devices. You may
use the guiding questions below the poem to assist in your analysis of the poem.
Harlem
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
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How do the series of similes in the poem develop the author’s themes and purposes?
How do the series of rhetorical questions support the author’s themes and purposes in
the poem?
How does the connotations and denotations of the author’s imagery and word choices
develop the author’s themes and purpose?
How does the title and opening rhetorical question develop the author’s themes and
purposes?
How does the shift in stanza tone and sentence structure between the first, second, and
third stanzas develop the author’s themes and purposes?