CHOOSE ONE OF THE POEMS
- 150-300 words
- focus on ONE of the "Discussion Readings" either on the poem by Hughes (“Harlem”), by Swenson, (“All That Time”), or by Whitman (“A Noiseless Patient Spider”). I'm attaching 3 of them.
- start by focusing on one specific thing about that poem (an image, simile, word, line, etc.), and identify it for us as your point of departure (quote it, give us the line number).
- include comment/analysis of that passage: as with our class discussions so far, you might try to connect a word or detail from that passage to develop a tentative idea about the speaker in the poem, and their attitude toward something or someone else referred to or described or observed in the poem. Reflect on what that detail suggests or shows, and then how you think it might connect to something larger in the poem, something the poem is trying to show us overall.
- (optional) raise a question you can't figure out about the line(s); something about it that falls outside your emerging view of what it's saying, some word or detail that doesn't quite fit, even after you've thought it through, even after you've looked up a word that seems unusual or even out of the ordinary somehow