Brooks Short Writing Prompt
Due in class Wednesday, March 15 (note change from syllabus)
Reminders: You have one “skip” available to you and only need to turn in short
papers for SIX of the seven poets. If you turn in all seven, I will take your six
highest grades. I will not take papers by email.
See syllabus for general assignment guidelines. All essays will be strengthened by
sticking close to the poetic text instead of drifting into generalizations.
Choose ONE of the following options. Your essay can be single-spaced, should
provide a word count (600 max), and should indicate which option you understand
yourself to be doing.
1. Two formal options. Choose one:
a. Scan (including marking feet) the poem “pygmies are pygmies still”
(37)—attach a copy of your scansion to the WE; you may handwrite
the scansion marks if that is easier. Then discuss Some Interesting
Thing(s) about Brooks’ use of meter in the poem, analyzing their
meaning or significance for this specific poem.
b. Provide an analysis of sound ([end, internal, exact, slant] rhyme,
assonance, consonance or alliteration) in either “The Lovers of the
Poor” (90-93) or “The Blackstone Rangers” (CP 146-48) that makes
use of specific textual evidence. Note that what I want here is not a
list of sound characteristics but a discussion of the work of targeted
sound strategies.
2. Discuss the role of war in (some or all of) these poems: “the white troops”
(25-26), the “love note” poems (27-28 and 28), “the progress” (28-29).
3. Analyze what thematic, poetic, ideological, etc. shifts from her earlier poems
you see, if any, in Brooks’ post-1967 poems “Boy Breaking Glass” (CP 145)
or “The Blackstone Rangers” (CP 146-48). You may focus on one or both
of the post-67 poems and should ground your discussion of “earlier” poems
in specific work rather than vague generalities.
4. Give me a brilliant close reading of “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of
Emmett Till” (81). Yes, you may include formal analysis.