Poetry Research Paper Assignment
As Per Miss Warren
Spring 2014 Sachse High School
For this assignment, you will choose one poet from the list below (should you find a poet that is of literary merit not on this list, please run this person by me before you begin further research). With this assignment, you will analyze and interpret a collection of poetry by a single poet in which you examine how cultural, societal, and personal factors influence and contribute to that poet’s work as a whole, as well as explain the technical ways in which the poet successfully conveys purpose and meaning (i.e. literary devices). Provided with this assignment is an example of own essay that follows these criteria.
Poets
Poetry Research Paper Assignment
As Per Miss Warren
Spring 2014 Sachse High School
Walt Whitman
William Carlos Williams
Carl Sandburg
e.e. Cummings
Maya Angelou
Langston Hughes
Gwendolyn Brooks
Robert Frost
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Emily Dickinson
Claude McKay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
William Carlos Williams
Nikki Giovanni
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Charles Bukowski
Joy Harjo
AudreLorde
Alberto Rios
Ocatvio Paz
Adam Zagajewski
Adrienne Rich
Sharon Olds
Anne Sexton
Janet McAdams
Dylan Thomas
William Butler Yeats
Pablo Neruda
Richard Blanco
Billy Collins
Li-Young Lee
Naomi Shihab Nye
Wallace Stevens
Rumi
Simon Ortiz
Walt Whitman
John Ashbery
Robert Frost
Maya Angelou
Seamus Heaney
Czeslaw Milosz
Federico Garcia Lorca
Ranier Maria Rilke
Charles Baudelaire
John Keats
William Blake
John Milton
Wilfred Owen
Alfred Tennyson
John Donne
Ted Hughes
Oscar Wilde
William Wordsworth
Johan Wolfgang Von Goethe
Anna Akhmatova
Amira Baraka
Mary Oliver
YusefKomunyakaa
NtozakeShange (Wrote For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, experimental poetry collection recently made into a movie)
Poetry Research Paper Assignment
As Per Miss Warren
Spring 2014 Sachse High School
Technical Details
You will look for articles and books about your poet as well as his/her poetry itself. Read through as many of the poems as possible and read about the poet's life as well as what other critics have said about his/her work. There will be a couple of class workdays, but definitely not enough for you to complete this research using only these days. Essay will be 6-8 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font only. Follow all MLA standards of documentation.
Important Dates
Monday 1/27In-class research day
Tuesday 1/28Annotated Bibliography and working thesis statement due
Thursday 1/30In-class writing/typing day
Friday 1/31Poetry Research Paper draft due Friday 1/31 for peer editing (graded – must have atleastthree pages plus Works Cited page included)
Tuesday 2/4Final draft of research paper due (hard copy with rubric attached at beginning of class; e-copy uploaded to turnitin by 3 pm)