ENGL 102--Wise

For this close-reading assignment, you will choose a poem from the book American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time. Then, you will conduct library research to find a secondary source that provides insight into this poem, its poet, its genre, or its subject matter. You will use this insight as a springboard into your own original argument about the poem. To develop your argument, you will

1. Summarize the insight(s) you’ve drawn from your source and apply them to your poem.
2. Provide a detailed explication of the poem itself, explaining not just the scene it describes or the ideas it explores but also the poetic elements it features (like rhyme, rhythm, meter, imagery, symbolism, metaphor, etc.), showing how these elements together support your overall argument.

• First, you’ll need to choose a poem from American Journal and read it carefully.
• Then, you’ll need to conduct your own library research to find a secondary source that will provide insight into your poem.
  • Use library databases that are appropriate for researching literary texts. Start with the Literary Criticism Research Guide from the Gregg-Graniteville Library.
  • For help with library research, use the Ask-A-Librarian resource the Gregg Graniteville Library offers. Remember, your overall aim will be to use your source as a springboard into your own argument about the poem, focusing on its specific elements.
• Write a 1-2 paragraph summary of your secondary source, focusing on the insight(s) it offers into your poem.
• Write an introduction and outline to organize the overall argument you’ll be making about your poem response to your source.
• Bring a completed, printed first draft of Close Reading 3 to class for a graded peer-review exercise.
  • In order to participate in this exercise and to earn a grade for it, you must bring your own completed, printed draft of Close Reading 3 to share with your classmates!
• In response to the feedback you will receive on your first draft of Close Reading 3, you must revise your work, producing the final draft of your Close-Reading 3. Once you’ve finished revising, write a 1- to 2-paragraph memo in which you describe the revisions you’ve made. Append this memo to your essay; it should appear as the last page of your document, following the Works Cited page.
• Submit the final draft of Close Reading 3 to Blackboard.