Formal Poetry Response #1
Length – 1000 words (10% either side is fine)
Due – 10/22 10pm; starting 10/23 – come by my office for feedback.
Possible Choices:
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My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun – William Shakespeare
Valediction Forbidding Mourning – John Donne
Ode on a Grecian Urn – John Keats
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird – Wallace Stevens
Filling Station – Elizabeth Bishop
Blackberry Picking – Seamus Heaney
You have written an “Informal Poetry Response.” For that assignment, you were allowed to
write about any poem. This assignment limits you to poems we have discussed in class so far
this year.
You have received feedback based on your informal poetry response. Please look at those
comments carefully and ask me about any of them that are not clear. Use these comments to
make this formal response better.
You should also look over the more general comments I wrote down while marking those
responses. They may also help guide you away from common less useful choices.
This assignment is based on the Suppose You Were Asked to Analyze a Poem handout. You
are, indeed, being asked to analyze a poem. That handout breaks this assignment down into
steps. It also provides an outline. Please use this handout to do well on this assignment.
You will notice that none of the steps of Suppose You Were Asked to Analyze a Poem indicate
that you should look up information about the poet or the time of the poem or the famous
interpretations of the poem that are easily accessible on the internet. Your job, instead, is to
ground your analysis in the text itself, with careful consideration of form + content + figurative
language = meaning statements with quotes from the poem as evidence.
You will receive feedback on the following:
How well does this response stay within the word limit? 10%
How well is this response edited? 10%
How well does this response flow (transitions)? 10%
How well does this response ground itself in the analysis of form + content + figurative language =
meaning? 20%
How well does this response ground itself in well-integrated quoted evidence from the poem? 20%
How well does this response move up beyond intermediate meaning to a big idea about human
experience? 20%
How well does this response appreciate complexity? 10%