Choose one of the essay topics provided below. Your essay must include an Introduction Paragraph with a clear Thesis Statement, Body Paragraphs, and a Conclusion Paragraph. Your Thesis Statement should include the authors and titles of the stories you will be discussing, as well as the chosen topic. The paper must be 3 pages typed (double-spaced, 12 point font). Papers should make use of quotation and analysis in a standard essay format. No research is necessary. Use your books, handouts, and class notes.

TOPICS:

Compare how NATURAL IMAGERY is used in the poem, “Spellbound” and one other poem from class.
Compare attitudes towards LOVE in the poem, “Love is Not All,” and one other poem from class.
Explore the theme of MEMORIES in the poem, “Raw with Love,” and one other poem from class.
Compare the use of PERSONIFICATION in the poem, “The South,” with one other poem from class.
Explore the different reactions and responses to RACISM/OPPRESSION in the poem, “I, Too,” and one other poem from class.
Compare the use of Extended Metaphor in the poem, “Work of Artifice,” and one other poem from class.
Explore the different outlooks and perceptions of DEATH in the poem, “Death Be Not Proud,” and one other poem from class.
Discuss the use of SARCASM in the poem, “To His Coy Mistress,” and one other poem from class.
Analyze the different coping mechanisms for dealing with LOSS in the poem, “One Art,” and one other poem from class.
Discuss the use of SYMBOLISM in the poem, “The Bluebird,” and one other poem from class.

Other poems from class:

Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise”

Claude McKay’s, “America”

Langston Hughes’ “Ruby Brown”

W.H. Auden’s, “Funeral Blues”

Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

Marge Piercy’s, “Barbie Doll”

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s, “The Spring and the Fall” “What my Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why”

William Shakespeare’s, “Sonnet 130” “Sonnet 116”

Paul Laurence Dunbar “Sympathy”

Robert Herrick’s “To Virgins, to Make Much of Time”

Robert Frost’s, “The Road Not Taken” “Stopping by Woods”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

Wallace Stevens “The Disillusionment of Ten O’clock”

Edwin Arlington Robinson “Richard Cory”

Paula Gunn Allen “Pocahontas to her English Husband: John Rolfe”

Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death”

William Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”

Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven”

Raymond Carver, “What the Doctor Said”

e.e. cummings, “I Carry Your Heart”