Poetry Essay 2

Explication of a poem or story in terms of its era (750-1250 words).

Choose a poem (or short story) from the anthology

and show how the author's meaning and techniques

reflect the currents of its era.

Use a poem (or short story) from an era you did not present.

Use a poem (or short story) we did not discuss in class.

Cite all primary and secondary sources using MLA format.

The point of this essay is to dive deeply

into the worldview of the author and his/her time,

and see how art reflects and defines that worldview.

It is important, therefore, that you seek

not only to explain "meaning,"

as we did in the first poetry essay,

but also to go beyond meaning

into the sociological and cultural currents implicit within that meaning;

that you go beyond the techniques the author uses,

and into an interrogation of why those particular techniques.

In other words, how does this person think?

What conditions the choices that s/he makes artistically?

How do these particular artistic choices reflect and imply

some larger vision of "life, the universe, and everything"?