ENG 1102 Term 1/2017 Length: About 500 words Draft Due via Canvas: 8.27 Final Copy Due via Canvas: 10.15 ENG 1102: Essay 1: Literacy Narrative Assignment: Write a short essay about the impact of reading upon your life—you might describe a favorite text from childhood or a book you read often—a work of fiction, faith, poetry, have at it. A literacy narrative essay explores one’s growth as a reader. Don’t confuse “literacy” with “literature.” The goal is to come up with a thesis that states how one specific text, or perhaps a series of them, or just the written word in general contributed to your personal development. Basic Guidelines: • • • • Double space your essay; include your name, the course number and section at the top of the first page. Avoid the use of the second person as it is conversational and too direct. Use the first person to describe your own thoughts, but better to use the third person in most of your analysis. Do not focus on the writing process—your reader does not need to know why you chose the topic or what you’re going to write about. Instead of telling your reader what you are going to do, do it. Write in the present tense unless specifically describing past events. How it will be graded: • • • • A failing paper, either a “D” or an “F,” will either be completely off-topic, so short as to be negligible, and/or be so marred by mechanical errors that meaning is lost. Further, the argument may not be grounded in a thesis or else lack examples or explain why the examples given mean for the interpretation. A “C” paper is one that manages to competently convey information to the reader—each part has a logical organization with clear thesis statements, contains coherent and complete sentences, appropriately answers the essay prompt, and does not have so many mechanical flaws that legibility suffers. A “B” paper has all the characteristics of a “C,” and in addition displays effective insights into the essay prompt (possibly acknowledging multiple perspectives on the issues, or making particularly good choices about what material to address), has fewer mechanical flaws, and has an organizational scheme and general tone appropriate to the material. An “A” paper has all the characteristics of a “B,” and in addition displays few or no mechanical flaws, pays attention to appropriateness of word choice and shifting tonality through the essays, displays a command of pacing and sentence variety appropriate to the varied content of the essays, and may display particularly thoughtful insights, of contain stylistic devices which illuminate the material. After you turn the paper in through Canvas, I will grade and return it to you via email as a Word or OpenOffice file. I will make comments throughout the paper to offer guidance on how to improve the paper and your writing in general. If you choose, you may revise the paper once for a new grade—I am a big believer in revision, so I urge you to take advantage of this option. You may have until the end of the term to re-submit any or all of your formal essays for a re-grade. What you’ll be graded upon: 15% Introduction: You set a context for why it’s important to discuss the place of reading and writing in our lives. How has your experience in these areas shaped your values? What can other people learn from the story you have to tell? You may use a specific anecdote or episode from your life to illustrate your point. 15% Thesis: You state in 1-2 sentences your main idea. The thesis is the culmination of your introduction. The first chapter book I ever read was Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and it changed my life because I was immediately hooked on Dahl (I quickly read every book of his I could find in our local library) and on reading in general. It is no overstatement to say that my journey towards being an English professor began with reading the words: “These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket.” 30% Organization. You have two options for organizing your essay, depending on the focus you take: OPTION 1: If you are writing about your experience becoming literate (learning to read and write), you will probably take a narrative approach, detailing your first experiences in school or your first memories of books or the first time reading or writing seemed to make a big impact on your life. You will want strong transition from paragraph to paragraph, and your paragraphs should be around six sentences in length to be fully developed. Your organization will probably be chronological, moving from stage to stage in your life. OPTION 2: If you focus more on a specific text or a specific reading experience, you’ll structure your essay in a more subject-by-subject fashion. Your introduction will establish that you are writing about significant moments at which literacy or particular texts impacted your life and give a sense of why those moments or texts are important. Your body paragraphs will be organized around each of those texts or moments, explaining what they were and narrating why they mattered. You will still want strong transitions and paragraphs of roughly six sentences. 10% Conclusion: Regardless of which option you choose, you want a conclusion that avoids summarizing what you’ve just said. You also don’t want to say, “In conclusion.…” Your aim in a conclusion is to place the discussion in a larger context. For example, how might those experiences be similar to or different from those of other individuals? How do you envision the role of reading in your life in the future? 15% Grammar and mechanics: Your paper avoids basic grammar mistakes, such as dropped apostrophes in possessives, subject/verb disagreement, arbitrary tense switches, etc. The paper demonstrates a commitment to proofreading by avoiding easy-to-catch typos and word mistakes (effect for affect, for example). 15% Presentation: Your paper meets the minimum length criteria of 500 words, is typed with a title and your name on it. You follow your individual professor’s instructions for formatting (margins, placement of the name, etc). Poetry or Verse Reading a Poem Paraphrase William Butler Yeats The Lake Isle of Innisfree Lyric Poetry Robert Hayden Those Winter Sundays Adrienne Rich Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers Narrative Poetry Anonymous Sir Patrick Spence Robert Frost “Out, Out—” Dramatic Poetry Robert Browning My Last Duchess Didactic Poetry Theodore Roethke My Papa’s Waltz Countee Cullen For a Lady I Know Anne Bradstreet The Author to Her Book Walt Whitman To a Locomotive in Winter Emily Dickinson I like to see it lap the Miles ** Gwendolyn Brooks Speech to the Young. Speech to the Progress-Toward Weldon Kees For My Daughter The Person in the Poem Natasha Trethewey White Lies Edwin Arlington Robinson Luke Havergal Ted Hughes Hawk Roosting Anonymous Dog Haiku Langston Hughes Theme for English B Anne Sexton Her Kind William Carlos Williams The Red Wheelbarrow Irony Robert Creeley Oh No W. H. Auden The Unknown Citizen Sharon Olds Rite of Passage Edna St. Vincent Millay Second Fig Thomas Hardy The Workbox For Review and Further Study **Julie Sheehan Hate Poem Richard Lovelace To Lucasta Wilfred Owen Dulce et Decorum Est William Carlos Williams This Is Just to Say Diction Marianne Moore Silence John Donne Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You The Value of a Dictionary Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ** Kay Ryan Mockingbird Aftermath Carl Sandburg Grass **Samuel Menashe Bread J. V. Cunningham Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead J. V. Cunningham Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead Word Choice and Word Order Robert Herrick Upon Julia’s Clothes Thomas Hardy The Ruined Maid For Review and Further Study E. E. Cummings anyone lived in a pretty how town Wendy Cope Lonely Hearts Anonymous Carnation Milk Gina Valdés English con Salsa Lewis Carroll Jabberwocky Ezra Pound In a Station of the Metro Taniguchi Buson The piercing chill I feel Imagery T. S. Eliot The winter evening settles down Theodore Roethke Root Cellar Elizabeth Bishop The Fish Emily Dickinson A Route of Evanescence Gerard Manley Hopkins Pied Beauty Jean Toomer Reapers About Haiku Arakida Moritake The falling flower Matsuo Basho Heat-lightning streak Matsuo Basho In the old stone pool Taniguchi Buson On the one-ton temple bell Taniguchi Buson Moonrise on mudflats Kobayashi Issa only one guy Kobayashi Issa Cricket Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Eagle William Shakespeare Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Howard Moss Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? Metaphor and Simile Alfred, Lord Tennyson Flower in the Crannied Wall William Blake To see a world in a grain of sand Emily Dickinson My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun Sylvia Plath Metaphors ** Jill Alexander Essbaum The Heart N. Scott Momaday Simile Craig Raine A Martian Sends a Postcard Home Other Figures of Speech James Stephens The Wind Margaret Atwood You fit into me **Timothy Steele Epitaph Dana Gioia Money Carl Sandburg Fog William Butler Yeats Who Goes with Fergus? William Wordsworth A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal Aphra Behn When maidens are young Alliteration and Assonance A. E. Housman Eight O’Clock Alfred, Lord Tennyson The splendor falls on castle walls Rime Kevin Young Doo Wop Hilaire Belloc The Hippopotamus William Butler Yeats Leda and the Swan Gerard Manley Hopkins God’s Grandeur Robert Frost Desert Places Reading Poems Aloud Michael Stillman In Memoriam John Coltrane Stresses and Pauses Gwendolyn Brooks We Real Cool Alfred, Lord Tennyson Break, Break, Break Dorothy Parker Résumé Meter Edna St. Vincent Millay Counting-out Rhyme A. E. Housman When I was one-and-twenty Walt Whitman Beat! Beat! Drums! Langston Hughes Dream Boogie English 1102 Essay 4 Requirements: Minimum 1000 words Draft Due via Canvas: 10.1 Final Copy Due: 10.15 Assignment: Write an essay that defends a thesis you developed through a close critical reading/analysis of a poem listed on the syllabus/weekly activities and supported by at least three secondary sources. This essay still relies on textual support from the primary text, but includes at least three secondary sources that support/sustain the student’s argument. Do not confuse “critical analysis” with “summary” nor should you speak of “relating” to the poem; the goal is to develop, sustain, and advance a thesis based on a critique of the primary text but also supported by at least three secondary sources. Use the MLA International Bibliography or JSTOR as in Essay 3 to support your ideas and thesis. Choose one of the poems in chapters 9-16 in Backpack Literature (excluding William Blake’s “London” and the extremely short poems or the doggerel like the satire of Shakespeare’s ‘Thou art as lovely as a summer’s day’ as that will be covered by a sample essay) and write a three to four page essay analyzing it through a close reading that takes the poem completely apart. As we did in discussing Shakespeare’s soliloquies and other speeches (and as some of you did in Essay 3) each line of the poem should be discussed in depth to support your thesis. Examine the words and the word origins, the images, the diction and tone that build up in the poem, the structure of the poem through its rhythm, rhyme, and meter. This is a difficult assignment, though it may appear simple. Don’t wait until the last minute to begin. After you turn the paper in through Canvas, I will grade and return it to you via email as a Word or OpenOffice file. I will make comments throughout the paper to offer guidance on how to improve the paper and your writing in general. If you choose, you may revise the paper once for a new grade—I am a big believer in revision, so I urge you to take advantage of this option. You may have until the end of the term to re-submit any or all of your formal essays for a re-grade. What you’ll be graded upon: 15% Introduction: You establish a context for the significance of your thesis in regards to the literary work as a whole. How does your argument contribute to understanding the author’s major literary/thematic concerns? What can other readers learn from your analysis? How does your analysis/critique fit in with other critical responses of the author/poem? 15% Thesis: You state your main point (or argument) in 1-2 sentences. The thesis is the culmination of your introduction. 30% Organization. Your essay should follow that of typical literary critiques: Since your focus must be on analyzing some literary motif, theme, or a combination of literary elements (such as symbolism, metaphor, meter, rhyme, etc.), your essay must contain well-structured supporting paragraphs that contain a topic sentence, quotes from the primary text, at least one quote from three different sources, an explanation/discussion of the significance of each quote you use in relation to your thesis, and a concluding sentence or two that situates the entire paragraph in relation to the thesis. Your thesis will focus on some kind of critical analysis of the primary text, so your supporting paragraphs should contain quotes from the text that illustrate your thesis/argument; in addition, you should include at least one quote from three different secondary sources to support your argument. Do not simply sprinkle random quotes into your paper and then ignore them; your supporting paragraphs should be organized around each of the quotes you use, explaining the significance of the quotes and why (or how) they illustrate your main point, but you also need to make sure that your paragraphs contain strong transitions and at least six (or more) sentences. 10% Conclusion: Regardless of the argument you make, you want a conclusion that avoids summarizing what you’ve just said, and please avoid writing, “In conclusion.…” Your aim in a conclusion is to place the discussion in a larger context. How does the poem speak to its era? How might your thesis be applied to other aspects of the text, say for example, setting or symbolism? 15% Grammar and mechanics: Your paper avoids basic grammar mistakes, such as dropped apostrophes in possessives, subject/verb disagreement, arbitrary tense switches, etc. The paper demonstrates a commitment to proofreading by avoiding easy-to-catch typos and word mistakes (effect for affect, for example). The paper adheres to MLA formatting style for in-text and bibliographic citations. 15% Presentation: Your paper meets the minimum length criteria of 1000 words, is typed with a title and your name on it. You follow your individual professor’s instructions for formatting (margins, placement of the name, etc). Please email me with questions/ideas/problems. I am here to help! Basic Guidelines: • • • • Double space your essay; include your name, the course number and section at the top of the first page Avoid the use of the second person as it is conversational and too direct. Use the first person to describe your own thoughts, but better to use the third person. Introduce your poems and authors by full title and his/her full name early in the paper. Thereafter, only use his/her last name. Do not focus on the writing process. • • • • Be sure that you do not simply summarize or paraphrase the poem. Assume the reader knows the poem you are talking about; your job is to help the reader see below the surface and understand the poem better. Write in the present tense, but do use tenses to show chronology in the speech itself as needed. Always use direct quotes to support your claim, and thoroughly explain what each quote means and why it is important to your thesis. A good rule of thumb is one quote per paragraph, though with a poem it may that be several quotes per paragraph are needed. Examine how your poet uses language—including similes, metaphors, and other comparisons, symbols, rhymes that link concepts, archaic meanings of words and their etymologies—use the OED through the links at the Troy library website (you pay for the subscription as part of your tuition—use it), etc. 
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