For your second essay, I’d like you to select ONE of the following questions below and to answer it using the five-paragraph essay format we practiced for the first essay about the photographs.
- Discuss three emotions Carolyn Forche experiences during her visit to the colonels house in her poem The Colonel. Consider her initial bewilderment at the contrast between his comfortable home and his fearsome reputation, her fear as his mood changes, her disgust as he brings out the human ears, her anger at the pleasure he takes in being a tyrant, and her determination to speak for the victims. (Remember to pick only three emotions to discuss. Dont address all of these.)
- Explore three aspects of the colonels character and situation as revealed in Carolyn Forches poem The Colonel. Consider his love of the good life, his fear of assassination, his brutal suppression of his own countrymen, his defiance of international opinion. ((Remember to pick only three aspects to discuss. Dont address all of these.)
- Discuss three emotions Yusef Komunyakaa feels while visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in his poem Facing It. Consider the pain his memories bring him, his fear as he relives those memories, his guilt at having survived the war, his resentment of those who werent there, his sense of comradeship with those who were, and his worry about what the future might bring. (Remember to pick only three emotions to discuss. Dont address all of these.)
Reminders about the five paragraph essay format:
Your opening paragraph must include the name of the author, the title of the poem in quotation marks, a brief summary of the poem, your topic, and the three points to be explored.
Your body paragraphs must have strong topic sentences and specific support drawn from the poem. I’ll be looking for at least TWO quotes from the poem in each body paragraph.
Your conclusion must restate your topic and three points and make a final comment. Options for that comment include a look at the poems title, a look at the end of the poem, or an examination of author intent.
Write in present tense and do not refer to yourself or frame your observations as I think or I believe. Simply state what you see and think.
Please try using an academic title, which is a creative title designed to provoke reader interest followed by a colon and a subtitle that states the topic of the essay. Here’s an example:
The Black Mirror: A Veteran Confronts the Past in “Facing It”
You may use a secondary source if youd like to provide historical context, biographical information about the poet, a comment by the poet about the writing of this work, or the comment of a critic providing an insight. I’ve given you links to these secondary sources in the lecture from Module 4 and hopefully you have looked at some of those links last week. However, if you do use a secondary source, restrict your use of it to one or two sentences total, and remember to properly introduce your source with a full signal phrase (In his article “Understanding the Memorial,” John Smith explains that “….”). But the essay should be primarily your analysis of the work and quotations from the poem itself.
And here are sample Works Cited entries for the two poems. If you use a secondary source, you will need to provide a Works Cited entry for that as well. Alphabetize entries by first word, usually the author’s last name and indent second and any subsequent lines of an entry by one tab (five spaces).
Works Cited
Forche, Carolyn. The Colonel. Poetry Foundation,
. Accessed 6 Feb.
2020.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Facing It. Poetry Foundation,
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47867/facing-it. Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.
And here’s an example of how to set up one of those articles I included a link to in the lecture material for Week 4.
Ekiss, Robin. “Yusef Komunyakaa: ‘Facing It.'” Poetry Foundation,
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69414/yusef-komunyakaa-facing-it.
Accessed 6 Feb. 2020.
