Analysis essay

Choose one of the poems listed below to write on. Read through the poem carefully,

Write an essay of approximately 750 – 1000 words in which you create an argument about the theme / message / meaning of your chosen poem. You should be answering the questions what is the message or lesson of this poem? and how does the poem convey or deliver that message?

Your essay should make some reference to the devices / techniques used in the poem and how they help to create or suggest the meaning. These poems are all sonnets, so you may want to think about how your chosen poem fits within the sonnet traditions.

The essay should have a clear thesis statement and topic sentences, an introduction, a conclusion, a title, an MLA (9th edition) style Works Cited, and most importantly, a coherent, interesting, and thoughtful argument that is backed up by solid and convincing evidence. You must quote the poem in order to back up your claims. Essays will be evaluated on the strength of the arguments presented as well as on the presentation itself (format, organization, style, grammar, punctuation, etc.). Please ensure that you proofread your essay carefully for mistakes and typos.

Please see below (after the poems) for a more detailed grading rubric. Consulting this rubric as you work on the essay will give you a better understanding of the expectations I want it to meet.

Poems:

1)In an Artists Studio

One face looks out from all his canvases,

One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:

We found her hidden just behind those screens,

That mirror gave back all her loveliness.

A queen in opal or in ruby dress,

A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,

A saint, an angel every canvas means

The same one meaning, neither more or less.

He feeds upon her face by day and night,

And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,

Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:

Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;

Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;

Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

-Christina Rossetti (1856)

2)I, being born a woman and distressed

I, being born a woman and distressed

By all the needs and notions of my kind,

Am urged by your propinquity to find

Your person fair, and feel a certain zest

To bear your bodys weight upon my breast:

So subtly is the fume of life designed,

To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,

And leave me once again undone, possessed.

Think not for this, however, the poor treason

Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,

I shall remember you with love, or season

My scorn with pity, let me make it plain:

I find this frenzy insufficient reason

For conversation when we meet again.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay (1931)