Text Poem Instructions and Examples

Text Poem Examples--Note: Examples may not adhere to guidelines for YOUR assignment. They are merely an illustration.

For this reader response you are to create a text poem for the book that highlights and assesses a particular theme, image, or motif in Douglass's narrative.

Guidelines:

    1. Provide a relevant title. You may use your theme/focus as part of the title or within the title, but it should not be the entire title. Be a bit creative.
    2. Below your title, write out your theme. (A theme in creative work is comparable to a thesis in an analytical piece.) Then explain a bit about your poem—anticipate where there may be confusion and attempt to clear it up. Your theme should be at least 50 words in length.
    3. Final copy should be typed, one with page numbers, one without.
    4. The final poem is to be between 30 and 40 lines long. Longer is possible if it really matters, but not shorter. You may create stanzas, line skips and line breaks as you see fit. You may even rhyme (but I strongly advise you not to). The poem’s presentation on the page is entirely up to you.
    5. The CATCH: Use only direct quotes from the text. (This rule does not mean that you can take “the” from one page and “girl” from another, etc. Find chunks and pieces of the text that emphasize and really speak to your focus/message/issue/theme. Each piece should reflect theme within itself.
    6. Use parenthetical page references throughout one version—the second copy should not have page numbers (it reads more elegantly that way). You do not need to include quotation marks, however, unless the quote is from the dialogue of a character.
    7. Use a minimum of 15 quotes from the text in constructing your poem.
    8. As you are typing your poem, you may confer with others, but be sure to create your own poem.