Poetry Essay Prompt:
Beat! Beat! Drums! By Walt Whitman
How does Whitman use various sound devises to mimic both the sound he asks the drums and bulges to make and the effects he imagines those sounds having? How might the poem`s date affect your sense of the poem, particularly its final stanza.
Rhetorical Situation (i.e., the conditions for writing this essay: subject, writer, and reader)
The response should express your personal reaction to the poem by relying on the formal learning you have gathered to convey your thoughts and feelings about the text.
Invention and Arrangement (i.e., determining and organizing what you?re going to say in this paper)
You?ll want to organize your paper in the manner you think will prove most effective, but here are some general guidelines:
? Always give your writing a point. In this case, the conversation you?re responding to is the one surrounding Beat! Beat! Drums! Indicate at the beginning of your paper that you?re writing in response to that conversation, then state a thesis that previews what you?ll be discussing in your paper and why it is an appropriate response to this text.
? Useful hint: Use the ?Responding to? and ?Writing About? sections in the poetry or drama portions of your textbook. They will give you questions to ask and samples to use when formulating a response. Answering the list of questions in those sections will help you develop a response to the text you?ve chosen. From them, you should be able to find a point at which you can introduce and explain your response.
? Readers will want to know why you have reacted the way you did. It?s not enough to just state your response. You also want to justify or explain them by:
o Thinking about how you?re going to come across to me and your classmates as a person of good character, good sense, and good will. Here are some tips:
? Know what you?re talking about: Provide details that show you?ve reflected deeply on your text and experiences, and supply enough evidence (from your knowledge of literature and your experiences) to support your reasons.
? Show regard for your readers: Try to come across as approachable and thoughtful, not arrogant or insensitive.
? Treat skeptical readers with respect?don?t ignore or demean their opinions just because they expect more proof. Be careful and meticulous in your writing, not sloppy or disorganized.
o Thinking about the values and emotions that your classmates and I share, and how you might appeal to us. Here are some tips:
? No need to stick to stuffy academic prose in this paper, but you also don?t want to be so informal that your classmates and I can?t understand you.
? Try to evoke emotions (sympathy, outrage, anger, delight, awe, horror, etc.) in your classmates and me that make your paper more moving.
? Try to evoke sensations (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling) in your classmates and me that make your writing vivid and help us to experience things imaginatively.
? Appeal to values (freedom, justice, tolerance, fairness, equality, etc.) that your classmates and I share.
? Don?t assume that your classmates and I will understand why your response matters?make us understand by explaining why your response is important and why we should care about it.
? However you arrange the body of your paper, make sure you fully cover every portion of this prompt.
Style (i.e., choosing the appropriate language for your paper)
One reason I?m asking you to write to your classmates and me is to break you of the habit of writing all your papers to some vague, generalized audience and/or attempting to make all your papers approximate some objective ideal. If you approach this paper in that way, your style will be ineffective because it won?t be tailored to your specific audience. When reading your paper, it should be obvious to your classmates and me that you?re writing to us specifically.
Judge appropriately how you can mix standard written English with everyday conversation. Since you?re writing to your classmates and me, you should write in an informal style that is distinctly your own, but do make sure you?re communicating clearly with the formal knowledge you?ve gathered from the course and textbook.
All readers appreciate coherent, unified paragraphs, so your paragraphs should include a topic sentence that clearly states the main idea of the paragraph and supporting sentences that cluster around the main idea without detours.
Proofread carefully; avoid errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and mechanics. Use Rules for Writers for questions you have regarding style.
Other Requirements
Paper should be 3 pages It should be double-spaced, typed in Times New Roman font, with 12-point character size and one-inch margins all the way around.
Evaluation Criteria:
? Includes a snappy title that catches the reader?s attention and indicates the topic and argument.
? Indicates that you are responding to a specific poem or play selected for this assignment
? Identifies a specific personal response appropriate to the text you?ve chosen.
? Provides well-developed reasons about your relationship to the text comes from a personal reaction to its contents
? Explains why your response is significant and to whom.
? Supports reasons with thoughtful, well-developed examples anecdotes, ideas, and questions.
? Reveals a credible writer, and appeals to the values and emotions of the audience.
? Develops a seamless, coherent, and well-organized exposition of your response.
? Sentences are lively, engaging, and relatively error free.
? If outside sources are used, they are used effectively and integrated smoothly to help substantiate or support points.
? If outside sources are used, there is proper attribution to each source cited via in-text parenthetical citation and a correctly formatted Works Cited page.
? Essay is 3 pages (max.) in MLA Style (Works Cited necessary if outside sources are used) in 12pt. Times New Roman font with 1-inch margins.
