Discussion essay

1500 words key elements of poetry

Write a well-organized essay on one or more poems assigned and explore one key element of poetry: theme, speakers, repetition, imagery, tone, irony, symbols, etc. You have almost endless freedom, but sample topics might include discussions of:

  • Speakers in Langston Hughes’s poetry, explaining how they relate to the major themes.
  • Langston Hughes’s “I, Too” as a response to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.”

S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” as an example of a pessimistic, modernist tone, comparing it to Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress,” showing how tone relates to theme.

Symbolism in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “What My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why.”

Tone in Emily Dickinson’s non-conformist poems.