A technical analysis involves identifying the various poetic devices used to express a theme in a poem. Select two of the poems from this week's required reading assignment and identify the technical information following the format below for each poem.
Here are the two poems:
• "Ballad of Birmingham," Dudley Randall, pages 706-707
• "The Secretary Chant," Marge Piercy, pages 771-772
2- writes two paragraphs of analysis, one each about the two poems that you have charted.
PARAGRAPH REQUIREMENTS
Each paragraph of poetry analysis should be unified under a sound topic sentence and presented in a coherent order with logical transition devices, and each paragraph should be 200-250 words long.
1. Begin with a topic sentence that includes the title of the poem, the poet's name, and the theme of the poem and the topic you will discuss. (Example: Lucille Clifton uses a tone of pride in "homage to my hips" to show the power she feels as a woman. Or: Emily Bishop uses imagery in her poem "The Fish" to express a theme concerning nature's struggle for freedom. Or Wilfred Owen uses a theme of horror to explore the theme of man's inhumanity to man.)
2. Follow this by giving 3-5 well-developed examples to prove your topic sentence. An example should include a transition, a brief quote, and an explanation of how the example relates to your topic sentence.
3. Introduce all quotations. Integrate brief quotations smoothly into sentences of your own. Eliminate anything in the quotation that would make the sentence awkward. Use an ellipsis (. . .) for any words left out. Use a slash mark (/) to indicate the end of a poetic line if that occurs in your quote. If you need to insert a word of your own for clarity, enclose it in brackets [].
4. Avoid using long quotations from the poems. Always introduce and explain each quotation.
5. Identify all quotes with parenthetical citations to indicate the line number quoted. If your quote begins on one line and goes on to another, the line number should appear with a hyphen separating them as in 3-4. However, if you have several brief quotes in a single sentence, separate the line numbers with commas as in 3, 4, 6.
6. End with a concluding remark that mentions poem, poet, and a summary remark.