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 by Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Robert Frost, or W. H. Auden.  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).  See also my chapter on Auden in my book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: A Jungian Interpretation of Literature.  You should choose the poem (s) you analyze from Auden's Selected Poems or the complete poems of the other three poets, some of whose poems are featured in our text, Perrine's Sound & Sense (see pp. xix-xxi).  Do not use an online text.

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 the poets below.  Some of these links are more useful than others, but at the least they provide background information to help you chose a poet or a poem.  They are not necessarily authorized web sites; indeed, you can not use them in your papers as one of the two required secondary sources.  If you find them useful, you may use one or two of them in your paper, citing them in your Works Cited, of course, as online sources.   Use the MLA Bibliography (available free to students, staff, and faculty at CSULB), as well as the University Library, for further research.