Poetry Research Project

You will be writing a research paper on a poet. This will enable you to become an expert on one specific poet. This project will not be a specific essay, but it will be published on your own website. We will be using the website weebly.com to help publish this project. The research project will require much of your time, budget accordingly. We will be using lunch time as a time to work on your project, both honors classes will have their own day to come to my room to work on the laptops.

Requirements

  • Biography of poet’s life
  • Describe the time period and place the poet lives/lived in
  • Describe the life of the poet
  • Describe the poet’s death
  • Describe the popularity of the poet’s work during his life and after
  • Analyze two poems written by the poet
  • You are to analyze two poems
  • This is where you state what you think the poem means and why
  • Be sure to use at least three lines from the poem to help demonstrate what the poem means
  • In order to support your idea on the analysis of a poem, you must quote specific lines of the poem and demonstrate how that quote reinforces your opinion.
  • You must use at least three different sources
  • A source will let me know where you got your information from
  • You must not plagiarize! Use your own words. If you use any specific lines from the internet or book, you must use quotes.
  • You must cite your work using proper MLA format
  • You must find a painting or picture that visualizes one image that is being described in each of the poems that you choose.
  • You must describe why the picture you chose, relates to the poem

Suggested Poets:

Each person in the class must have a different poet. If there is a poet that you would like to use, but he or she is not on this list, feel free to ask me if you can use him or her.

William Shakespeare / Nikki Giovanni / Gwendolyn Brooks / Sylvia Plath
Walt Whitman / E. E. Cummings / Edgar Allen Poe / Ezra Pound
William Blake / Maya Angelo / John Keats / Dylan Thomas
Emily Dickenson / Langston Hughes / William Carlos Williams / A.E. Housman
Robert Frost / Marge Piercy / William Butler Yeats / Robert Hayden

Suggested time frame

May 1-4

  • Choose your poet
  • Begin researching your poet’s biography
  • Begin writing the biography portion of your paper
  • You should have all of your sources written down

May 7-11

  • Find the two poems that you are going to use from your author.
  • You should have all of your sources written down

May 14-May 18

  • Begin analyzing your two different poems
  • Each analysis should be at least one typed page
  • Add your analysis to your paper
  • You should have all of your sources written down

May 28-June 1

  • Look for a picture that describes an image in your poems. You should have one picture for each of your poem
  • Describe the image and how it relates to your poem.
  • Write your work cited page

June 8

  • Website is due