Prompt: Reflect on the poetry we have discussed during weeks 1-4 and discuss some of the challenges you encountered with the texts and how you overcame these challenges. Be specific. Use as support for your essay examples from at least three of the poems themselves.
Suggested structure for the essay (following the classical model):
Opening paragraph (about 100-150 words): Hook to catch the reader’s attention, discussion of why your approach is important, and three-part thesis statement.
Three to five body paragraphs (each about 250 words minimum): Each topic sentence corresponding to one part of the thesis statement along with discussion to prove your claim and supported by textual evidence as well as sound reasoning, concluding with a sentence that ties the paragraph together.
Concluding paragraph (about 100-150 words): Re-statement of your thesis, answer the question, “So what?” (that is, now that you have proven your case, why should we as readers care?), and recommendations to the reader (what might the reader do with what you have proven?).
Rubric: clear structure, accurate language, logic, sufficient support to prove your claims, spelling, grammar, punctuation, focus (staying on topic).
You may write in first person (I) or first-person plural (we/our/us). Watch for tense consistency. Give a title to your essay that connects clearly with your thesis statement.
Whenever you quote from a poem, be sure to provide the poet’s last name as well as the line number(s) in parentheses after the quote (use double quotes [“–“] throughout).
Proofread carefully. Listen to your sentences: remember that we write with our ear (reading aloud what you have written in draft helps with this).
No research is required, but if you do draw from other sources be sure to document (MLA format) all of these within the body of your essay and include a works cited page at the end.
Poetry uses highly concise and vivid figurative language to express the author’s deep feelings. It is a literary genre concentrated reflection of social life has a certain rhythm and tone. However, poetries provide more challenges for readers who appreciate them than other literary genres, which are more straight-forward. Since it is my first time getting close to a poem, I have encountered many difficulties in understanding and analyzing poetry. As we have learned many different poetry types, I gradually realized that I should explore and appreciate poetry according to poetry characteristic. We should appreciate the poem from its tone, symbol, and background to understand poetry. Listening to the speakers’ tone helps us comprehend the ups and downs and changes in the poem’s emotions. Analyzing symbols helps us understand the deep meaning of poetry, and understand the background of a poem helps us know the author’s motivation and what he wants to express.
To begin with, the tone of poetry. Poems are subjective. The thoughts and feelings they express belong to a specific person. Therefore, poems come to us as the expression of an individual human voice. In that case, the tone is essential and special to one poem because it shows the speaker’s attitude. Based on my brief understanding, I found that the reader’s voice will vary depending on the poem’s tone. We usually regard the tone of poems as “mood”. In that case, it seems that there might be different moods in a poem, and one can understand the author’s mood through punctuation marks and its rhythm. But the more direct way is to listen to the reader, read the poem. Fortunately, I have a chance to listen to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, written by T. S. Eliot. It’s worth noting that the speaker of this poem is Prufrock, not Eliot himself. When I first listen to the poem, I think it has a depressed and solemn tone giving me an image that a low self-esteem older man desires beautiful things, but he was beaten by reality due to his unbearable appearance. Based on the negative tone of the poem, I can feel his helplessness and loneliness. However, when I notice the punctuation and analyze the poem line by line, I found that most of this poem is full of the older man’s mumbling, showing his hesitation and contradicting himself. There were many pauses in his writing act as if he is forgetting what he was initially saying. As I said previously, there is usually not only one emotion and tone shown in a poem. There is a change in lines 37-48, where it shows many question marks. Prufrock raise his tone slightly to emphasize his problems “Do I dare?”, “Do I dare disturb the universe?” I infer that he is asking whether he dares to love the person he loves, and maybe he tries to express the repugnant to himself and worries about how people look at him. More importantly, I think Prufrock magnified his problems to such an extent that he thought they would affect the universe. I think it’s when people are very unsatisfied and disappointed with the situation so that they tend to worry about things that are not necessary. In that case, I can also feel he is self-contemptuous. Overall, no matter how the voice changes, no matter it is an older man’s mumbling or the rising voice of the question, we can see his inferiority and emptiness. After listening to the poem, the unstressed and stressed syllables give us a sense of harmony and balance, but more importantly, it explains the negative emotional tone of the whole poem. However, it is also necessary first to identify the speaker and determine his or her character. In that case, looking for the poem’s background helps us discover the entire poem’s gist.
In terms of background, because the writer’s creation is influenced by his or her life background. Therefore, understanding the knowledge of his writing motivation is helpful to understand the content of the poems. Usually, we will connect the social and historical background, pay attention to the author’s time, the social influence on the author’s creation, for example. When I first read “Churching Going”, written by Philip Larkin, I am a little confused that, on the one hand, he practices religion naturally. One the other hand, he questioned himself: “what remains when disbelief has gone?” “When churches fall completely out of use, what we shall turn them into?”. It seems that his behaviours are weird, and I have no idea about this poem’s motivation. However, when I know that the author wrote the poem when the Church of England is entangled with the government. It is ruled by the monarch and involves state and legislative functions. In other words, the British government is gradually weakening the control of religion over the state. As a result, there are thousands of beautiful churches in Britain, and their historical value makes them popular destinations for tourists. However, Sunday church attendance is usually low and declining because of the restrictions on a religious rule. With this background, I can understand the author’s contradiction; moreover, I gradually know that the poem’s theme is questioning the meaning of church and religion. We should pay attention to the author’s childhood life analysis and the influence of personal experience on the author’s creation. When I first read the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost. I can only understand how beautiful snowy the scenery he painted. Even I get a deeper understanding; I know that the traveller enjoyed the snowy woods but had to go back to his journey due to his responsibility. When I get through the poet’s story, I realize the emotions poet put here is heavier than I think. The theme of “Stopping by Woods” is the temptation of death, even suicide and the whole poem is tightly spread around the core of “life is a journey.” Robert Frost experienced hardships all his life; he lost his father in his childhood, his wife in his middle age, and his son in his old age. These “disasters” from his life almost made him give up his career. It is as if the traveller in the poem had tired of the world’s pressures; he also wanted to escape from the world’s bustle and purify his soul in peace and happiness. But finally, both the poet and the traveller realize that he has to keep his promise, even though he lingers here. He has to shoulder his responsibilities and obligations to his country, society, family, and himself. He has to move on. Knowing the poet’s experience makes me more empathy, and I can even feel the same feelings as him. Therefore, I think it is essential to combine the background of the poem when we appreciate it.
In addition to writing poems based on their own experiences, the writer sometimes uses symbols and images to express their feelings. Therefore, when I cannot understand a poem, I will also analyze the poem’s objects. In a literary genre as short as a poem, every word and sentence of the author is full of deep meaning, including the objects they refer to. When I read the poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” written by T.S. Eliot, I was impressed by the symbol of “mermaid” as it makes the beauty that Prufrock is longing for more specific, but also let us be more aware of the gap between dreams and reality because they’re also entirely unattainable. Prufrock can never be with mermaids, even talk to them, because mermaids do not exist in our world. However, it is this unreachable dream that makes the reader and Prufrock more curious about them. This dream world is undoubtedly more attractive than the cruel reality. However, he still had to wake up from his dream because even though he was with the mermaids, his inferiority would not allow him to courageously pursue them. Besides that, in “Churching Going”, we will think about religion and belief when we talk about church. Indeed, there is no doubt that the church is symbolized religion and belief in the poem. In that case, this poem’s interpretation cannot be limited in the absence of the church. The speaker considers the church’s future; he might be regarded as more about religious faith to human needs.
All in all, from my perspective, to get a further understanding of poetries, listening to the tone line by line helps us comprehend the ups and downs and changes of the author’s emotions in the poem, analyzing symbols of the poem helps to emphasize the meaning of a poem, and understanding the background of a poem helps empathize with the authors. Poetry is one unique literary genre; as a reader, we should care about its tone, symbol, and background. Because each poem is highly concentrated on the author’s thoughts and feelings, even punctuation has meaning, and I think readers should pay attention to every detail that the authors mentioned. Based on my case, I highly recommend understanding the poet’s life experience. At the same time, learn to pay attention to everything in life. Because when you see something in a poem that symbolizes the author’s feelings, it will arouse your interest in learning poetry.