Your next critical paper is due in TWO stages:
This is going to be a short paper, 4 pages (and that's the minimum), that takes only 1 short poem as its main focus. Your job is to develop and support an argument about what, and how, the poem means. The first step is to develop a thesis.
Thesis Statement
Just to review:
Because poetry is relatively difficult, and requires some interpretive work even to gain a basic sense of what’s being said, students often conclude that a paper that summarizes the poem, stanza by stanza, and that points out a few technical points—the meter, the rhyme scheme, a use of personification—will pass muster. It will not. You will need to make a claim about the figurative meaning of the poem, to offer an interpretation we can argue about beyond the poem’s literal “argument.” Remember that a lyric poem expresses a speaker’s thoughts, perceptions, emotions, or ideas. Think about the “frame” or structure of the poem as complicating, or perhaps commenting on, the idea, and you will wind up with an argument.
Templates
In [author’s] lyric/sonnet [title], a speaker [active verb and an object] ________. By the end of the poem he/she seems to conclude/believe _________. The [formal element], however, reveals that ________. The poem thus suggests that _________.
The form of [author’s] lyric/sonnet ________ demonstrates continuity and integrity. Within those confines, however, the speaker experiences ___________. The tension between the form and the speaker’s _________ suggests ___________.
Over the course of [author’s] lyric/sonnet [title], a speaker experiences a crisis: he/she [description of crisis]. Nonetheless, [some formal element(s)] suggests [resolution or reconciliation, or perhaps an emotional reversal that hints at a way forward].
These are skimpy, I admit. Those blank lines certainly require more than a word or two. In fact, I can easily imagine these being elaborated into 5 or 6 sentences—elaboration coming mostly in between the sentences I’ve put up, NOT tacked onto the end.
Here's a version of the first, with significant modification:
In David Wagoner’s lyric “My Father’s Garden,” the “melter” at the center of the poem is described as a hero, making and unmaking the world in his metal workshop. His challenge is to retain a sense of imaginative creativity as he toils away at labor described as both physically demanding and monotonous. A final simile suggests failure: his effort to envision his work as life-giving collapses onto a tired and forced comparison. At the same time, the poetic speaker’s regular use of metaphor to depict his father demonstrates an imaginative empathy that might stand as a kind of inheritance. If the father could not quite sustain the role of artist, he bequeathed to his child a commitment to plastic powers of mind.
Some Reminders:
Finally:
I cannot emphasize enough that this paper is a “close reading” of a poem. You MUST, MUST, MUST look at technical aspects of the verse to support your argument. I don’t want a laundry list of everything you can “name” in the poem. So you must be judicious in choosing what technical aspects apply to your argument. But I expect discussion of at least three of the following elements we’ve been working with: stanzaic and line structure; rhyme and other sound effects; rhythm and meter; and figurative language. Naturally I also expect you to employ the technical vocabulary we have encountered.