English 111
Essay 3
Write a paper in which you discuss form and content in one, two or three poems available on the LibGuide.
Notes
This prompt is looser than the first two. It requires you to discuss form and content, but it does not insist on
the relationship between the two. That is the ideal, but it is not required. I want you to have more flexibility
here because the relationship is often hard to spot in poetry, and we have spent much of our time simply
learning to identify and recognize the formal properties, not analyzing their relationship to content.
However, even if the two are not related, you must discuss both. In other words, your paper must spend
some time talking about what the poem means, and some time talking about how it is written. This applies
to every poem you write about (see the note on number of poems, below).
It is your choice which of these options (form or content or both) you will focus on. Your paper might have
a brief section describing the form of the poem, pointing out some of its key features, and then discuss the
meaning of the poem in depth. Or, it might briefly describe the poem’s meaning, and then present a detailed
analysis of the form. Finally (the ideal) it might focus throughout on how form creates meaning.
No matter what, you must say something about the rhythm of the poem. This is an
absolute requirement. It can be in a separate, brief section of the paper, or it can be
included in the larger discussion of form, but it must be somewhere in your paper.
If you’re only going to give a brief description of the rhythm, you must also say at least a
little bit about some other formal aspect of the poem.
There are many different ways you can organize the paper. I have presented some on the back of this page.
If you are unsure how to organize your paper, use one of these approaches.
All this means that the thesis of the paper will be a little looser too. Some parts of the paper may not relate
directly to the main topic. That’s ok, but there should still be one main focus to most of the paper.
Criteria for a Successful Paper
A successful paper will:
 Describe the rhythm of the poem. This may be part of discussing the form and the content, or it may be
a brief separate section, but it must be included.
 Discuss the form of the poem(s). This can mean many things, including:
 Rhythm, including regular meter, counterpoint (and the effect of line breaks in general), and the
cadence of words within the lines
 Sound correspondences, including rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and consonance
 Larger structures such as stanzas and groups of lines
 Imagery (physical description)
 Symbols (physical objects, events, people or places that represent some larger idea)
 Motifs (images, words or phrases, or other elements that repeat throughout the story)
 Any of the other formal elements to be found in prose, including narrative structure, characters,
word choice and so on
 Discuss the content of the poem(s), especially theme (the abstract ideas or deeper meaning)
 Give specific examples drawn from the poem(s) that illustrate the form and/or the content
 Explain how the examples work (how they support the point they illustrate)
 Have a thesis—a single, unified point to which every part of the paper relates. (See Notes, above.)
 Be between 1,100 and 1,500 words.
Possible Topics or Questions
There are many, many ways to approach this assignment. The examples below are provided to illustrate the
kind of thing I want you to be writing about, and to stimulate your own thinking. You are not required to
use any of them, but you may if you find yourself without ideas.
 Why does Camille Dungy use the metaphor of language to describe natural phenomena like the sound
of a river or the howl of a coyote? (Or is it the other way around?)
 Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy” is very dark, and yet it much of the time it has a bouncy, almost nurseryrhyme quality to its rhythm. Explain how that rhythm contributes to the poem’s overall effect.
 Compare and contrast the use of alliteration in “The Emperor of Ice Cream” and “The Windhover” by
Gerard Manley Hopkins.
 What does the broken statue symbolize in “Ozymandias”?
 The tone of “When Negro Teeth Speak” is both angry and funny. Explain how the enjambment
contributes to that effect.
Format
The paper should follow the same format as the previous two papers.
Possible organizations
All these examples assume a paper about a single poem. Writing about more than one poem allows for
further variation, but the basic idea is the same.
Example A
I. Brief description of the rhythm
II. Brief description of some other formal element, such as imagery
III. In-depth discussion of the meaning
Example B
I. Brief discussion of the meaning
II. In-depth analysis of the rhythm
Example C
I. Brief discussion of the meaning
II. Brief description of the rhythm
III. In-depth analysis of some other formal element
This one is NOT allowed:
I. Brief description of rhythm
II. In-depth discussion of meaning
(The reason it’s not allowed is, if you’re only going to give a brief description of the rhythm, you must also
say at least a little bit about some other formal aspect of the poem.)