For this assignment, you will select a single collection of poetry (50-100 pages long) by a single author and write a 5-page book review. By “single collection” this means you should avoid anthologies, “Selected,” or “Collected” books of poems of an author’s work. A single collection of poems is typically between 50 and 100 pages and is a collection of poems released all at one time. If you can only find a collected book of poems by the author, then this can be okay–you will focus on just one book inside the collection (as long as they are separated as such.) It is up to you where you get this and how you read it. You may purchase it from the store, order it online, or read a digital copy of the book (if available.) When selecting a book, I encourage you to look back at the poems you have liked from our course thus far. Typically, on the Poetry Foundation website, at the bottom of each poem, they will cite where the poem is from and when it was published. Writing the Essay: In your essay, you will discuss and analyze the poet’s historical context, and you will conduct close readings of at least 3 poems from the book to provide textual examples of the poet’s use of form, themes, images, language, style, and other relevant points. I encourage you to make comparisons to other poems or poets when discussing the book as well as to draw on the criticism of scholarly work (just be sure to cite them all.) In your review, consider these questions: What is holding this book together? Are there certain themes that get repeated in the book? What is the form of the poems like? Are they all similar? Different? How so? Where does this poet fall in the timeline of poets we have looked at in this class? Are they working in the same tradition or with the same tendencies as others, or are they reacting against them? Try to relate their work to at least a few writers we have discussed. Lastly, what is the importance of this book? What is your final opinion of it? (be sure to back this up with examples.) Requirements: The essay should be a total of 5 full pages, double-spaced, in MLA format. Instructor will be grading the essays on the following criteria: Quality and complexity of analysis Synthesis and use of terms/ materials from this class in your discussion of the book you’ve chosen Clarity of writing (take time to proofread your essays; seek help from others, if needed) Follows appropriate MLA form and properly cites and uses sources without plagiarism (since all essays are automatically checked for plagiarism, be very careful to always cite your source when you use ideas that are not originally yours; III. Book Reviews In addition to reading the above poems, you should also spend this week working on your book review essays. It’s been said of certain books before (such as James Joyce’s Ulysses) that “you can’t it, you can only reread it.” This is true for reading a book of poems in preparation for writing a review of it. So give yourself plenty of time to spend on this. Writing a good book review is not easy. It requires you to look at the book micro- and macroscopically–to analyze the poems in detail but also to make comments about the book as a whole. Here are a few prewriting tips of things to do in preparation to writing your essay: Prewriting Read the book all the way through, taking quick notes and dog-earing or bookmarking favorite poems. It’s okay if, at first, you pick lots of favorites. You can narrow them down later. But try to pick out at least five that seem most interesting to you or exemplary of something you think is important about the book. After you’ve read it all the way through, jot down some first impressions: overall, how did you feel reading it? Is the book broken up into different parts? Are there different “moods” to the book? Read the book through again. In your notes, pay attention to recurring themes (do a lot of the poems have to do with a certain topic?), the form of the poems (do all the poems look different? the same?) Focus on the favorite poems you picked out. Ideally, for an essay this size, it’s best to whittle it down to using 3 poems, but that number is flexible. Reread and re-reread these poems closely, taking down notes. At this point, you’ll want to begin thinking about what it is you’d like to say about the book (your thesis) because the poems you choose to discuss in the essay should be examples to help you support this idea. Once you have taken detailed notes on the poems you’d like to discuss, you can begin drafting an outline or simply start writing–whichever method best works for you. Last, begin your draft. And don’t be afraid to change your ideas a bit as you read and think about the book some more. Writing As with the last essay, you have a good amount of freedom in terms of what you want to discuss, so long as you do so to an adequate depth and thoughtfulness. Here are some questions, though, to consider when thinking about the book you are reviewing. You could spend your whole essay discussing just one of these or you could possibly mix several together; it’s up to you and what you feel is important for a reader to know about the book. What themes are explored in the book, and how does the author address these? What form or forms do the poems come in? Does the writer use fixed forms, do they create their own, or are the poems mostly free verse? Are the poems mostly the same shape, with the same length in lines, number of stanzas, etc? What tradition is this poet a part of? Are they well known or less known? How has their work been received by others? When and where was this book published? Were there relevant historical events or conditions that affected the writing of this book? Are the poems similar at all to any other poets you know? Is this poet drastically different (but similar in some way) to any other poets you know? (In any of the ways mentioned above) Warnings: These are a few things to avoid doing in your essay Don’t over quote. It is great to include quotes of the poems in your essay, but you only need to quote what you actively reference and discuss in the essay. Also, in terms of page count, know that I will be aware of the use of over-quoting to simply reach the minimum page requirement; when evaluating essays I don’t count the quoted material into the page count. So if you have a five essay, but 1.5 pages are taken up quoting an entire poem, then that is actually more like a 3.5 page essay. Don’t over summarize. This is an honest and easy mistake to fall into. While some summarizing can be helpful so far as it helps you explain your bigger goals in the essay, it is not your job nor your focus to summarize the entire book in great detail. Keep general summaries of a poem to about 1-2 sentences. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t comment on and interpret the poems, but your focus shouldn’t be on simply reiterating the content of the poems. Expect that your reader can read it for his or herself. Don’t refer to authors by only their first names. Use full name or last name only. I know I’ve said this elsewhere, but it’s worth repeating as doing so in the future on any other literary analysis essay is a quick and easy flag of an amateur; and I don’t want any of you to be mistaken for amateurs! Don’t use past tense when talking about literary works, even if they were written in the past. This always takes a bit of adjusting to, but the standard for writing about works of literature is to use the “literary present.” So unless you are describing when the book was published (in that case, past tense is fine), always use present tense. For example, you could write: “In her poem, “Daddy” Sylvia Plath explores the complex and turbulent relationship of a daughter to her father.” However, you could remark that “the poem was published in xxxx.” —Here’s are instruction from the school—————— I will buy the e-book or Kindle that the book that you choose to do and I attached rubric for you. The poem style that we discussed in our class is Modernism, Harlem Renaissance & Beat Poetry, Narrative Approaches & The New Surrealisms, Identity Politics & Poetics, Language, Conceptualism, Minimalism, & Other Oddities here are some style we discussed in our class. When you choice the book you should provide which part of the poem style that is the book usually talks about among the styles that I told. Before I hire you I need to get book confirm by my instroctor. And lastly, becareful about the warning from the instructor This essay will be complicated so I wants some one who have experienced about the poem book review.
