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On the next 3 pages, you’ll find questions—derived from important categories of the assignment rubrics—for reviewing and revising your Vanitas Selfies,
OOObject OOOdes and essays.
Exchange copies of rough drafts with your group members. Read through the drafts you receive, taking notes on the draft or this worksheet. Use the
questions below as guides as you consider your feedback. When all group members finish marking their drafts, converse with each other about the comments
you made on the drafts or worksheets as you read. Then hand back the drafts to their owners. If you also took notes on this worksheet, give it to the writer.
Your goal today is to be GENEROUS and PRECISE. Identify as specifically as you can what is working in a draft and what is not. Offer as many specific
suggestions for improvement as you can.
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Questions on Vanitas Selfies
Rhetorical Awareness
1. How effectively does the artifact express a meaningful argument? In the space below, write down the “take away” from the picture.
What do you get out of viewing it? (If you can’t articulate this “take away,” then suggest to the writer that he or she think more about the
“so what” answer of his or her artifact.)
2. How successfully does the artifact combine elements of vanitas art with elements of selfies? You ought to be able to identify features
from both genres, so if you can’t, point this out.
3. Do the objects in the picture work together to tell a story, or do they seem arbitrarily chosen or haphazardly placed?
Could the argument be improved with more objects, different objects, more exaggerated gestures, a more obvious theme, etc?
Identify at least one specific suggestion for improvement.
Design (Also see WOVENText 88 for additional questions to ask about Design)
1. Identify at least one way the design/composition of the artifact clarifies or extends the argument. If you cannot see that the author has
adequately considered the design and composition of his or her photo, point this out.
Note color and contrast; light and darkness; repetition of shapes or angles; sizes of objects; chunking of objects (which objects
are closest together; which are in the foreground and which in the background); setting; meaningful or distracting tension.
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Questions on OOObject OOOdes
Rhetorical Awareness
1. How effectively does the poem express a meaningful argument? In the space below, write down the “take away” from the poem. What
do you get out of reading it? (If you can’t articulate this “take away,” then suggest to the writer that he or she think more about the “so
what” answer of his or her poem.)
2. Is the poem object-focused, or do you find it too tilted in favor of the human point of view?
3. Mark the places in the poem where the language is the most impressive, detailed, surprising, memorable, etc. Also mark the places in
the poem where the language is most pedestrian, cliché, unmemorable, imprecise. (Don’t be shy about this – poems thrive on precision;
they sag under the weight of shabby vocabulary or dull energy. If you can help your classmate revise one line—even one word—of his or
her poem, you’ll have done that person a world of good.)
Organization
1. Identify at least one way the structure of the poem clarifies or extends its argument. If you cannot see that the author has considered
structure, point this out.
Note the presence or absence of suggestive line breaks; consistency in meter, rhyme scheme or stanzas; headings; indentations;
dashes or other unconventional punctuation; etc.
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Questions on Essays/Artist Statements
First, a note: good essays will function as explications of your pictures and poems. Imagine your audience viewing the poem and essay
(or photo and essay) together, moving back and forth from one to the other. The essay should guide the reader through the most
important features of your poem or picture, moving from general claims to specific support and back again. Essentially, you want to
convey, in an organized and thorough manner, three things with each of these essays:
1. Here’s what my picture or poem means …
2. Here’s everything I did to make it mean that …
3. Here’s why it matters (the So what question) …
So, since your ultimate goal is to answer these questions, that means you’re concerned not just with explaining what you did, but why
you did it. A good thesis statement, by the way, will hint at both the what and the why.
Rhetorical Awareness
1. Has the writer identified the central argument of the picture or the poem? You should be able to locate this argument early, in the
form of a thesis. If you can’t find it, or if it’s not coherent, make a note for the author.
2. Does the writer consistently support his or her claims with specific evidence from the picture or the poem? Mark the places that need
to be developed with specific support.
Organization
1. Are the writer’s paragraphs coherent (united by one strong main idea), or is the writer trying to do too much at once? If you can’t
underline a single main idea in every paragraph, make a note.
2. Explications of creative work can be organized in many different ways. If the writer’s essay seems unorganized, you might suggest one
of the organizational strategies listed below
a chronological structure (moving down the poem line by line)
a left-to-right structure (reading the story of the picture linearly)
topic-based structure (ex: 1st paragraph about physical objects; 2nd about gestures & expressions; 3rd about filters and edits)
Whichever strategy is used, the writer should consistently refer back to the main idea(s) of the thesis statement. Ultimately that is
the best way to keep a reader focused.
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