“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden

For this assignment, you will examine a poem and write an analytical essay to explicate the poem. You may include a personal response to the poem in your paper, but this should be framed in third person: simply refer to yourself as a reader. You may use dictionaries or encyclopedias as secondary sources for the essay, but the primary source will be the poem itself. To begin, choose one of the following poems: “Poem [Lana Turner has collapsed]” by Frank O’Hara “Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen “A Certain Lady” by Dorothy Parker “Persimmons” by Li-Young Lee “Leaving the Motel” by W.D. Snodgrass “Repulsive Theory” by Kay Ryan “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden “[When I consider how my light is spent]” by John Milton “Sex without Love” by Sharon Olds “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas “[Because I could not stop for Death--]” by Emily Dickinson “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost “[That time of year thou mayst in me behold]” by William Shakespeare “Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich “Sonrisas” by Pat Mora “Digging” by Seamus Heaney “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane” by Etheridge Knight “Barbie Doll” by Marge Piercy Read through the poem. Type up two or three work sheets. Circle key terms. Box unfamiliar terms. Try to focus on the images that come to mind and the emotions you may feel. Look up key terms. See if the poet is using an unusual definition for a word. By examining diction, figurative speech, images, and tone, you may come to a fuller understanding of the poem. Try to scan the poem or key lines in the poem. Try to straighten out the syntax. Review materials in your literature book which discuss writing an explication. Then, in 3-5 pages, write an explication of the poem you have chosen. Begin by identifying title and author. Characterize the speaker and give a brief overview of the surface reading—just what happens in the poem. Continue this introductory paragraph with three or four sentences highlighting the major images in the poem to create a prose rendering. Narrow your introductory paragraph down to a thesis statement in which you use terms from our vocabulary list. Identify some sort of effect on the reader that leads you to infer the theme or central idea in the poem. This theme should be part of your thesis statement. Then, continue your explication by examining each image or three or four major images. Each image should, at the very least, have its own paragraph. Make sure you point to certain lines to prove what you see in the poem. Identify and discuss figurative language. Explain the denotation and connotation of key terms and how this diction contributes to tone. Examine versification. Your draft should be submitted in a timely manner to fellow students and any tutoring services so that you can revise and edit before submitting. Your paper should be 1000 words, 7-8 paragraphs, or 4 typed pages, double-spaced with standard one-inch margins and standard 12-point font. Use MLA parenthetical citation form to document your sources. Include a list of works cited. Your paper should be clean and well organized. Remember to use present tense when you are referring to literature, but past tense when referring to something in the author’s past or a date when the poem was written or published. Give your writing a meaningful title that reflects the focus of your essay. Center your title. Use correct MLA form with standard one-inch margins, standard double spacing, and a legible font. Make sure your name, the class including the time we meet, the date, and the name of the assignment appear in the upper left-hand corner of the first page. The essay must be written in Standard American English. Remember to adhere to our class guidelines for Academic Integrity: the submission for the assignment must generate a Turnitin Score of less than 25%.