Topics for Short Paper

For this assignment, I will grade primarily on what I consider the basics of literary argument:

• THESIS and STRUCTURE. Is your paper focused around a specific thesis which makes an argument about the meaning of the text(s)? Do all the parts of your paper support that thesis?

• EVIDENCE. Do you back up every claim you make with evidence from the text (specific quotes, or paraphrases or summaries of longer passages)? Does your evidence logically support your claims? Do you interpret the evidence for your claims persuasively, rather than just quoting a passage and assuming that your reader sees the same things in the passage that you do? Have you taken account of all the passages in the text that might tend to discredit your argument?

• INTERPRETATION. Does your paper offer an original argument about the meaning of the text(s) (as opposed to the text's literary merit, your own views on the ideas and issues raised in the text, the characters in the text as if they were real people, etc.)? Does your interpretation take account of the text's subtleties and complexities as they pertain to your topic? How ambitious are you in going after difficult, complex issues?

I will also take into account other factors (maturity and sophistication of style, correct documentation of sources, correctness of grammar and punctuation, etc.), but they will not count as heavily as the three above.

Use of secondary sources is not recommended for this paper. Do cite all sources, including the poem you are writing about, in correct MLA parenthetical style.

Length is less important than quality of thought, but you should aim at a length of 3-4 pages.

Choose one of the following. I will hand out more topics as it becomes clearer what we have and have not discussed in class.

1. We have talked about Frost's interest in human orderings of the world and their relationship to nature. What does "The Wood-Pile" say about human order, nature, and/or the relationship between the two?
2. In class, we traced some of the currents of "Thanatopsis" back to two British sources, Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and Gray's "Elegy." But it is likely that Bryant was influenced by Puritans like Edward Taylor as well. Compare Bryant's treatment of nature in "To a Waterfowl" or "Thanatopsis" with Taylor's treatment of nature in "Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold." How much of a debt does Bryant's vision of nature owe to Puritan ideas? (This topic is probably only workable if you believe that Bryant actually does owe something to Puritan ideas.)
3. Emerson's "The Snow-Storm" is often read as a poem about artistic creation, and more specifically about the relationship between nature and art. If you agree that this is a valid approach to the poem, explain what the poem says about art and nature.
4. Dickinson's poem "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass" (1096) is a riddle poem--that is, it describes something without naming it (we have to guess--and you should guess in your paper--what she is talking about). A riddle requires us to perceive and recognize an object, and as such might be treated as a kind of test case for Dickinson's ideas in "Perception of an object costs" (poem 1103). Are Dickinson's depictions of perception in the two poems compatible? If so, how? (If you think the poems really don't have much to do with one another, you probably shouldn't pick this topic.)
5. We have discussed at some length Whitman's debt in "Song of Myself" to Emerson's essay "The Poet." If you believe that "A Noiseless Patient Spider" is also indebted to "The Poet," choose a single idea (or a tightly related group of ideas) from the essay that you think Whitman took to heart, and explain how Whitman uses that idea in the poem.
6. It is likely that Emily Dickinson also read "The Poet," but poem 288 suggests that she got something out of it very different from what Whitman got. Choose a Dickinson poem from the anthology that you think shows the influence of one of Emerson's ideas in "The Poet" and explain the influence. (446 is an especially good option, but there are other possibilities as well.)
7. In section 3 of "Song of Myself," Whitman says, "opposite equals advance,...always sex, / Always a knit of identity..." There are a number of sections in the poem that talk about sex, and of course the title of the poem alone suggests that identity is one of the poem's major concerns. Focusing on a single short passage, explain the relationship between sex and identity in "Song of Myself."
8. Given what we have seens of Stevens' world view in "The Idea of Order at Key West," what is Stevens saying about the relationship between mind and world, or between the products of the mind and the world, in "Anecdote of the Jar"? (You do not need to refer to "Idea of Order.")
9. It is evident from "A Supermarket in California" that Ginsburg feels indebted to Whitman. How? Trace one idea from one of Whitman's poems to either "A Supermarket in California" or "Sunflower Sutra," showing how Ginsberg takes up and or/transforms that idea. Please focus on Ginsburg's and Whitman's ideas, rather than on the formal structures of their verse (such as Ginsburg's use of the long free verse line, which is very clearly based upon Whitman's), and narrow your focus to a single idea.
10. We have discussed (or will have discussed) the importance of voice in Langston Hughes' "The Weary Blues" and other poems by African-American authors. Discuss the importance of voice in Hughes' "Theme for English B." One way to go with this: what kind of language is required in an English theme, and how might this conflict with the literal terms of the assignment? How does the speaker meet these conflicting demands?
11. Explain why every line but one of Gwendolyn Brooks' "we real cool" ends with "We," taking account as fully as possible the poem as a whole (the poem' ideas, verbal play in the poem such as alliteration and internal rhyme, etc.).
    Second batch of topics:
    
12. Jorie Graham's "The Geese" could easily have fit into our "Reading the Book of Nature" thread, and it is likely that Graham has read most or all of the poems we have discussed in this section of the class. Choose a single idea from either Stevens' "Idea of Order at Key West" or Ammons' "Corsons Inlet" and use it as a springboard for discussing Graham's treatment of comparable ideas in "The Geese." Is Graham implicitly responding to one or the other of these poems?
13. Show how Ammons' use of colons in "Corsons Inlet" matches his ideas in the poem. As a starting point, you might keep in mind the following quote from David Lehman: "When I asked Archie about his use of colons, he said that when he started writing poetry, he couldn't write if he thought 'it was going to be important,' so he wrote 'on the back of used mimeographed paper my wife brought home, and I used small [lowercase] letters and colons, which were democratic, and meant that there would be something before and after [every phrase] and the writing would be a kind of continuous stream.'" (Lehman, David. "Archie: A Profile of A.R. Ammons". American Poet (2006). Rpt on poets.org, <http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15766>).
14. The central situation and some of the language in Philip Freneau's "The Indian Burying Ground" is similar to that of Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Pick one thing (an idea, a situation, a way of describing his subject, etc.) that you think Freneau borrowed from Gray and show how he made use of and transformed it in "The Indian Burying Ground."
15. Is Poe's representation of Helen's beauty in "To Helen" compatible with his discussion of beauty in "The Poetic Principle" and/or "The Philosophy of Composition"? (If you choose this topic, I recommend that you look at my teaching notes to find out what some of the classical references are. Helen also, of course, alludes to Helen of Troy.)
16. In Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" there is a tension between images of confinement and timidity on the one hand and of proud ferocity on the other. What's the point of this comparison?
17. What does William Carlos Williams' "To Elsie" say about the imagination? (That poem first appeared in Spring and All, prose excerpts from which were handed out on the first day.)
18. What does Ezra Pound say about the state of American art in "To Whistler, American"?
19. Traditionally, Helen of Troy is portrayed as an object of desire or even love (Christopher Marlowe characterized her with the famous phrase "the face that launched a thousand ships"). How does H.D.'s conception of Helen of Troy in "Helen" differ from the usual portrayal of her, and what is H.D.'s point in representing her this way?
20. Marianne Moore often uses a close examination of an unusual animal such as an ostrich or a pangolin as the basis for a discussion of some human quality or idea. What quality does she praise in "The Snail," and what point does she make about that quality?