Sharon Olds’ “The Subway” or Cornelius Eady’s “Sightings”

Critical Analysis Assignment

Choose either Sharon Olds’ “The Subway” or Cornelius Eady’s “Sightings” and write a clear, coherent multi-paragraph essay of approximately 750 words. (Both poems have been posted on the course website so that you can print them and annotate the poem you choose to analyze). Your main aim should be to explain your understanding of the meaning of the poem and how the poet achieves that meaning through the use of imagery, figurative language (simile, metaphor, personification, symbolism, etc.) and specific poetic devices such as alliteration, consonance, rhythm, rhyme and form. Below are the guidelines for the assignment:

• Your paper should consist of four to five paragraphs, including an introduction, two or three body paragraphs, and a conclusion
• It should contain a clear thesis statement defining the central theme of the poem
• It should identify the speaker and the setting of the poem
• It should also identify the tone of the poem and explain how that tone is communicated through the poet’s use of imagery, figurative language and specific poetic devices such as those listed above
• It should contain quotations from the poem to develop and support your analysis/interpretation
• The quotations should follow the standard conventions for quoting poetry (outlined below)
• It should be typed and double spaced using a size 12 font
• It should be submitted on the course website as a PDF document

Learning Outcomes

By completing this assignment, you will learn the following critical reading and writing skills:

• To navigate the main stages of the reading and writing processes in planning, writing and revising a university-level critical analysis paper
• To reflect upon a short, written text and explain your understanding of that text in your own words
• To understand the way that the specific conventions of a genre shape your response to a text
• To apply your understanding of poetry as a genre in analyzing a specific poem
• To analyze a poem in terms of its tone, theme, word choice, style and structure
• To explain the relation between the meaning of the poem and its form
• To recognize the difference between literal and figurative use of language
• To explain your analysis/interpretation of a poem in a clear, coherent essay
• To adapt your writing to meet the needs and expectations of your target audience
• To use the MLA method of in-text citation and documentation

Reading and Writing About Poetry

Poetry differs from other kinds of writing and often requires different reading strategies than short stories, novels, essays or plays. Below are questions that are useful to bear in mind when reading and writing about a poem.

• Who is the speaker in the poem? To whom is he/she speaking?
• What is the setting of the poem? Does the poem describe or enact a dramatic situation? If so, what is it and how is that situation described?
• In terms of subject, what is the poem about? What are some of the themes that the poem addresses?
• What is the tone of the poem? How is that tone created?
• What key words and images does the poet use? How do they contribute to the poem’s tone and its meaning/effect?
• What specific figures of speech and poetic devices does the poet use? How do they contribute to the poem’s meaning/effect?
• Does the poem contain any recognizable allusions to other poems or other texts? If so, what are they and how do they contribute to its meaning/effect?
• Is the poem written in a recognizable form? If so, how does the form contribute to the poem’s tone and its meaning/effect?
• If the poem is written in free verse rather than a traditional form, what specific formal features can you discern and how do they contribute to the poem’s tone and its meaning/effect?
• What is your personal response to the poem? Do you like it or not? Do you feel like you understand it? Are there any aspects of it that you find easier to understand than others? Would you be comfortable writing about it? Why or why not?

Common conventions when writing about and quoting poetry

• It is common when writing about poetry –and literature in general– to use the present tense even if the poem was written a long time ago
• It is also common to refer to the author by their first and last name the first time you mention their name, and to use only the author’s last name in subsequent references
• The titles of poems, short stories, essays and other short works should appear in quotation marks not italics (italics are reserved for the titles of novels, plays, films and other long works)
• When quoting a poem, it is necessary to indicate where individual line breaks occur using a backward slash, e.g. “The boy and I face each other. / His feet are huge, in black sneakers . . .”
• In addition, if individual lines in the poem begins with a capital letter, it is necessary to indicate that in your quotation (see example above)
• Quotation marks are required whether you are quoting individual words in a poem or entire lines, e.g. The speaker regards herself and the young black man as two “molecules” rushing “through the darkness” of the subway tunnel.
• Quotations of three lines or less should be integrated in your sentence, e.g. The speaker describes the young black man as having the “casual cold look of a mugger . . . .”
• In quotations of four or more lines, it is necessary to use block quotations and to introduce the quoted lines in the form of a complete sentence followed by a colon, e.g. In the first lines of the poem, the speaker describes her first impression of the young man sitting across from her on the subway:

The boy and I face each other.

His feet are huge, in black sneakers

laced with white in a complex pattern like a

set of intentional scars. We are stuck on

opposite sides of the cars, a couple of

molecules stuck in a rod of light

rapidly moving through the darkness.

• Note that block quotations are indented and do not require quotation marks
• In general, it is best to quote selectively and to rely mainly on short quotations rather than long block quotations