Essay Assignment Two

Peer Review: M 4.27
Due Date: M 5.4
Length: 3 pages, double-spaced

Assignment Goal: To create an argumentative paper about the meaning of a common theme from two or more Claude McKay poems using textual evidence and close-reading to support your claims.


Assignment Description: For this paper, you will compare and contrast at least two poems by Claude McKay, ideally from different periods in his career (according to the sections from our course text). Check the Table of Contents in our course texts to find out when he wrote certain poems. Neither of these poems can be one that we discussed at length in class, although one of them can be a poem you discussed as part of small group work. If you want, you can choose two poems from Harlem Shadows. If you want extra credit, I will provide 1.5 additional extra points in the course, separated from the essay grade, if you choose a poem from Songs of Jamaica or Constab Ballads.

The poems should have a common theme that you identify and that you analyze using close-reading of individual lines and stanzas of the poem. You should be able to identify the major formal elements of the poem, such as rhyme scheme and meter, and, wherever possible, address the tension between 'form' and 'content' in how you make meaning from the poem(s). Students should incorporate vocabulary words from class wherever possible, such as "ambiguity," "alliteration," or "line," etc. In terms of how many vocabulary words to incorporate, I'm looking to see at least three of our poetic terms in the paper.