ASSIGNMENT and
READING
LIST FOR FINAL PAPER
This thesis-driven
paper, worth up to a 100 points, should be 4-6 pages long (not
counting the Works Cited page), font size 12 or 14. Your interpretation
should be an explication or an analysis (see Arp and Johnson, 305-306)
of a poem or poems from the list of poets below. You should
follow one of the four varieties of papers outlined in Arp and Johnson
(307-310); you may use a current form of literary criticism, such as I
do in my essays on Dickinson
(Jungian/Archetypal/Queer Studies) and Bishop
(New Criticism or Formalism).
You must have an introduction (with a thesis, underlined), body, and conclusion. Follow MLA style (which means your paper will be typed, double-spaced, and unbound, with no separate title page (see pages 320-21 in the MLA Handbook); put the paper in a regular-size file folder or in one with pockets on either side). You must hand in a full-length rough draft (a printout with hand corrections or a hand-written draft with revisions). You must use at least two outside sources and cite them MLA style. I expect your sources to be authorized. Never use an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia for a source. You may use a dictionary, of course, but it is not counted as a secondary source. Cite the specific text of the primary source you're using under the author's name, again following the MLA style. Also, you must provide copies of the pages you use from each secondary source with the author, title, and date written on the copies (or circled if they are printed there). This goes for books as well as for printouts. If you fail to do any of the above requirements, I will take 5 points off for each failure. Remember, I do not accept papers without rough drafts.
I have provided links to all of the poets below. Some of
these
links are more useful than others (and indeed some may not be current),
but at the least they provide
background
information to help you chose a poet or a poem. They are not
necessarily
authorized web sites; if you are in doubt about whether they
are, see
me.
Use the MLA
Bibliography (available free to students, staff, and faculty
at
CSULB),
as well as the University
Library, for further research.
Please be careful not to plagiarize. It has become a serious
problem, and you will fail the course if I discover you have
plagiarized, intentionally or not. Remember that using anyone
else's words
without quotation marks, even if you give credit to your source, is
plagiarism. See the Schedule
of Classes and the MLA
Handbook.
THE POETS
From each poet you may choose a single poem or a combination of
closely related poems. You must clear the title (s) with me first.
If
you
wish to do a poem by a poet not listed here, you must get my
approval. If I do
not own a copy of the poem (s), you must provide one with your paper.
Auden, W. H.
Allen, Paula
Gunn
Alexie, Sherman
Bishop,
Elizabeth
Blake, William
Brontë,
Emily
Brooks,
Gwendolyn
Browning, Robert
Byron,
(George Gordon), Lord
Cavafy, Constantine
Cisneros,
Sandra
Forché,
Carolyn
Frost, Robert
Garcia Lorca,
Federico
Ginsberg,
Allen
Gunn,
Thom
Hardy,
Thomas
Harjo, Joy
Hogan,
Linda
Hopkins,
Gerard Manley
Housman,
A. E.
Hughes,
Ted
Keats,
John
Kenny, Maurice
Kinnel,
Galway
Komuyakaa,
Yusef
Lawrence, D. H.
Lifshin, Lyn
Lorde,
Audre
Merrill,
James
Momaday, N.
Scott
Olds,
Sharon
Plath,
Sylvia
Rimbaud, Arthur
Roethke,
Theodore
Rossetti,
Christina
Rossetti, Dante
Gabriel
Rumi
Sexton,
Anne
Shakespeare,
William
Silko,
Leslie Marmon
Snider,
Clifton
Snyder,
Gary
Swinburne,
Algernon Charles
Tennyson,
Alfred Lord
Thomas, Dylan
Whitman, Walt
Williams, William
Carlos
Yeats,
W. B.