You will find the poems in your Compact Literature eBook. Access your textbook by clicking on it in the Syllabus. If you have any difficulty connecting with your eBook, call the Help Desk.

Week 1 Discussion

Choose a poem from the list below. Read all of the poems before making your choice; do not simply choose the first one you read. If a poem has already been discussed by two other students, choose another one from the list. We want to have an interesting discussion of a variety of poems! (Check the closed list and the discussion thread before posting.)

TIPS:  

• Do not repost the poem or directions in your response. 
• Use your poem’s title as the title of your post, and put quotation marks around the title.
• Mention the title and author in your post, and give specific examples from the poem to illustrate your points.
• Include at least one quotation from the poem, and use in-text citations and an end reference to document your source.
• See the model post in the directions for an example response.
• Use the eBook as your source for the poem. Do not use outside sources for any assignment until we reach Week 5’s library assignment.
• Do not use an attachment. Post directly into the response area.

You will give an end reference in each discussion this session. The reference for this one will include your poet and poem. The automatic reference given by the textbook is incomplete, so do not use it. If you need help, see the example I posted in the thread starter on how to cite poetry.

There are no right/wrong answers and can be many perspectives on a poem, so relax and have fun with the assignment. Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m here to help!

Read the Following Poems (Used in Weeks 1 and 2):

• Bradstreet, To My Dear and Loving Husband
• Brooks, We Real Cool
• Browning, How Do I Love Thee
• Burns, Oh, My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
• Cummings, Buffalo Bill
• Cummings, Next to of Course God America I
• Dickinson, After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes
• Dickinson, Because I Could Not Stop for Death
• Dickinson, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
• Dickinson, This is My Letter to the World
• Dunbar, We Wear the Mask
• Espada, My Father as a Guitar
• Frost, Design
• Frost, Mending Wall
• Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay
• Frost, The Road Not Taken
• Heaney, Digging
• Heaney, Mid-Term Break
• Herrick, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
• Hughes, Theme for English B
• Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
• Karr, A Blessing from My Sixteen Years Son
• Komunyakaa, Facing It”
• MacLeish, Ars Poetica
• Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
• McKay, The White City
• Mirikitani, Suicide Note
• Pastan, Ethics 
• Plath, Daddy
• Rich, Living in Sin
• Robinson, Miniver Cheevy
• Robinson, Richard Cory
• Roethke, My Papas Waltz
• Shakespeare, Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds
• Shakespeare, My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun
• Shakespeare, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Day?
• Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
• Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar
• Yeats, The Second Coming