PAD 631 Cutting a Swath by Tricia Stohr-Hunt: Poem Analysis Essay
Humanities
Flying through life’s grand chaos, bright and vast,
the tide of days leads down a path unknown.
I know not who I’ll be when I am grown,
but want to live a life that’s unsurpassed.
I wish to speak in words both true and fast
(when sideways glances make me feel alone
or handsome smiles imply I’ve won the throne),
while keeping every secret to the last.
But I commit my heart with pen to page,
my feet to races not yet known or run,
my life to every opportunity.
These dreams I hold are bound to come of age,
cannot be stopped and will not be undone,
because they live and breathe to be set free.
Tricia Stohr-Hunt
For this essay, you will focus on ONE of the sonnets in the “Cutting a Swath” sonnet crown. A crown of sonnets is a series of seven sonnets that are in loose discussion with one another; the last line of the first sonnet becomes the first line of the one that follows, and the final line of the seventh sonnet repeats the first line of the first sonnet, making a circle. “Cutting a Swath” is a collaborative crown of sonnets, written by seven authors. According to Liz Garton Scanlon, author of “Because I live and breathe,” the fourth sonnet in the series, the poets “wrote about teens for a teen audience…. [and] about tribe and identity and separation and connection and prom and fights and failure and freedom.” Please look below to see which specific sonnets are available to you. Start by reading the whole sonnet crown to get a feel for where your chosen sonnet and the individual voice of your speaker fit into the whole. You’ll want to pay attention to the specific part of the argument being offered in the sonnet you choose.
Assignment:
Choose one of the sonnets from your group and write a formal, line by line or stanza by stanza analysis of the poem.Begin by annotating the poem. You will turn this annotation in.
Answer the following questions thoroughly on a separate sheet of paper (typed). You will turn this pre-write in as well. Please note that single word answers won’t help you develop ideas! Plan to spend a couple of hours discovering all your poem offers.
- What does the poem reveal about the speaker? (Where does the poem give us information/clues about the speaker’s personality, situation?) Think about what we learn in this poem that we didn’t know in the other poems with this speaker.
- What specific words and images are significant in creating the speaker’s tone, and in conveying the speaker’s attitudes?
- What is the subject of the poem? (be specific! I’ve already identified the general subject in the assignment, so you’ll want to look at the specific argument of this poem) How does this poem fit into the dialogue as a whole, responding to what has come before? What focused problem/situation/train of thought does the poem develop?
- How do the linguistic elements of the poem (repetition, accent, caesura, enjambment, rhyme, volta, alliteration, assonance) contribute to that exploration?
- How do the conventions of the sonnet form contribute to the content? To what extent are rhyme, meter, repetition and stanza divisions important in the poem’s development?
- How does the poem move?—That is, where do you see attitudes/ situations/ personalities change during the course of the poem?How does the poem’s ending contribute to our understanding of sleep or wakefulness? How does it contribute to the ongoing poetic dialogue?
Based on your annotation and prewrite, write your formal analysis.Organize your essay so that it moves from the start of the poem to the end.
Please note that a formal analysis is one that is particularly attuned to the way that structure, language, and conventions of the poetic form affect the subject of the poem.
Essay presentation: Your essay should demonstrate that you have fully considered all of the above questions. Your essay should not, however, be organized as a series of answers to these questions, but should contain a thesis which suggests your overall interpretation, should follow the poem’s development, and should conclude without repeating the introduction. Pay attention to topic sentences, transitions, quotation, etc.
