Modern Poetry
As for that paper, you are free to choose any topic of interest that has to do with the works we have read in the course. You may want to compare authors on a particular theme, or perhaps show how a writer’s biography influenced his work. You may want to pursue a specific theme, for instance the response to Nature, and show how variously the poets expressed it. In this last instance I was thinking specifically of Hopkins, Hardy, and Frost. You may want to write on Yeats’s use of the supernatural in his poetry, or his treatment of theme of women. He writes frequently about romantic relationships, including his own, which is another good topic. In the case of Eliot, the theme of human isolation and incommunicativeness is very important, as it is for Frost. All of these are possibilities. In writing about them, be sure to write directly and clearly and to provide textual evidence. There is nothing wrong with your going to the library or going online to read up on the subject you are writing about.
