Your Poetry Literary Response Journal should convince me that you have read and thought carefully about the assigned poems. To a limited extent, it is true that a poem means what the reader thinks it means; you must, however, be able to explain your interpretation by specific references to the poem. If your understanding of the poem is "wrong," yet your journal clearly proves that you read (or misread) the poem, you may well receive full credit. Your grade is based on what you have to say and how well you say it -- your personal reaction to the poem and your explanation of the logic that led to your interpretation.

Your grade is also based on following directions. I will not penalize you for grammar and usage errors -- but to receive credit, you MUST include the following in every LRJ:

the poem's title in quotation marks
the writer's name
a quotation from the poem -- integrated with your own sentence, properly punctuated, and commented upon as necessary to show why you cited that particular passage. No Quote Lumps!
specific references to the poem
careful thought

After you've included the five MUSTs above, you may choose any of these MAYBEs to guide
your response. You may even choose the same one every time. Consider the possibilities:

  1. a general statement of the poem's content
  2. an analysis of the poet's persona, i.e. the poem's speaker
  3. a discussion of the title's significance
  4. a detailed response to a specific line or lines
  5. a comparison to another poem, song, story, movie
  6. an examination of poetic techniques used, such as rhyme, rhythm, simile, metaphor, personification, allusion
  7. a close analysis of the poet's diction, perhaps noting specific word choices, or connotation and denotation
  8. a transformation of the poem to another form, such as a cartoon, a news story, a letter, a play, a soap opera, a commercial, perhaps a different form of poetry
  9. an original poem developing in some way from the assigned poem
  10. a paraphrase of the poem
  11. a discussion of the writer's life and its relevance to the poem
  12. a statement relating the poem to your experience or ideas
  13. an explanation of problems you had in understanding the poem
  14. your opinion of the poem, good or bad, supported by specific references from the poem

Length: Approximately 1/2 to 1 page long for each LRJ
Format: Blue or black ink, front side of the paper only
Due: Beginning of the hour in the basket on my desk.