Poem Project

1. First, visit the Favorite Poem Project Videos website and view a minimum of 3 of the videos. In the first part of your post, identify the three videos you watched, e.g. We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks read by John Ulrich (plus you’ll list two more videos). Make sure to identify the poem, the poet, and the reader of the poem. Next, tell the class which of the three videos you like the best and why that particular video impressed you. Be as specific as you can. For example, I love the poem’s depiction of inner city youth and the irony of kids trying to be cool only to die a premature death. The reader’s own experience growing up in the inner city of Boston and losing friends to drugs and violence on the streets brings the poem’s profound message to life and puts a face on human tragedy.
2. For the second part of the discussion you are required to name your own favorite poem and provide a hyperlink or URL to an online version of that poem. After you name the poem, please explain in around 50 words what impresses you so about this particular poem. If you are absolutely unable to find a poem you like you can substitute the lyrics of a favorite song but you must provide a link the song’s lyrics (a youtube video is an extra bonus); however, your instructor much prefers you chose a poem. For example, –

My favorite poem is Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”. This poem’s power astounded me when I first encountered it in a Contemporary Poetry class. Where does the poet’s intense anger come from? How can she compare her father to a Nazi? The poem’s anger is told in a nursery rhyme rhythm making the anger all the more unsettling. Plus, the poet uses only one simple rhyme throughout the poem. It is like an incantation that stays me with years later. After hearing this poem read aloud I wanted to know more about this poet. How could a young woman write such a strange and unsettling poem?

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Read Robert Frost’s famous poem “The Mending Wall” and answer the following pre-writing questions to gather information and support for your essay.

Frost writes the poem as a blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) monologue. He establishes the speaker as one who questions why he and his neighbor (from over the hill) continue to rebuild the stone wall establishing the boundary between their lands when the effort seems futile.

1. The speaker of the poem acknowledges several reasons for not having a wall. List the reasons he offers.
2. The speaker is imaginative and tries to turn the task of repairing the stone wall into a game. How does his neighbor respond?
3. Why does the speaker compare his neighbor to a “stone savage armed’?
4. Why does the speaker seem willing to continue the custom of repairing the wall in spite of his recognition that walls are impermanent?
5. What does the poem suggest about human control of nature? How do the speaker and his neighbor represent two attitudes toward nature?
6. Where do you find humor in the poem?
7. Do you think the speaker finds his neighbor frustrating or funny or difficult to understand?

After answering the above questions about Robert Frost’s poem “The Mending Wall”, re-read the poem and use the information gathered in responding to the questions as your content for a short essay.

Choose one of the following three options as the topic for a 500-750 word essay in which you establish paragraph topics and develop your topics through explanations and offering supporting evidence through: quotation, paraphrases, and/or brief summaries. Do not conduct any outside reading for this assignment.

1. Explain and give evidence to support your claim that the speaker agrees that “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.”
2. Write an essay to show that by recognizing the limits of human control of nature, or other people, or time the speaker can keep his perspective and avoid hardening into a “Stone age savage” continuing a tradition without reflecting on it.
3. Write an essay to show that traditions can both promote and restrict “neighborliness.”