The paper should be 3-4 pages long, and it can be about any one of the five poems found on the website’s First Paper page. The point of the paper is to demonstrate that you can read a poem with care and generate a satisfying discussion of its meaning. Your paper should explicitly discuss both the form and the meaning of your poem, and when possible, describe how those two elements work together. Among other things, you may wish to: • Give an account of the poem’s rhyme scheme and metrical structure. • Explain important images—including an account of how significant tropes work. • Point out significant choices of word, including ambiguous words or words that may convey multiple meanings. • Discuss significant syntactical structures. • Point out significant effects of sound or rhythm. • Illustrate your most important points above with well-chosen quotations. The paper should be emailed to me as an MS Word attachment. I do not want either PDF’s or Google Documents. If file format is going to be an issue for you, you should consult me. Your essay should be properly formatted in a font such as Times New Roman or Georgia 12. It should be double-spaced with one-inch margins. Your name, the class, and the date should be in the upper righthand corner of the first page. The paper should be carefully proofread. It’s important that papers be grammatically correct, and papers that have persistent grammatical issues will receive a lower grade. However, I also want to make a distinction between grammatical problems and proof-reading errors. Proof-reading errors include things like: • Most spelling errors • Wrong words inserted by auto correct and left to stand by the author • Sentences that don’t make rational (as opposed to grammatical) sense • Sloppy or otherwise unprofessional copy If there are too many of these types of errors in your paper, I’ll penalize you by as much as a full letter grade. Finally, let me remind you about the discussion of plagiarism on the syllabus and discourage you from using outside sources for your essay. You can generate enough things to say by simply using your own head to apply the concepts we’ve discussed in class. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me if you have questions or run into difficulties.