An Analysis of Poetry: The Meaning of Mortality

You must write a 4-6 page paper on at least 5 poems from our text to discuss The Meaning of Mortality: Like love, death is one of the great poetic topics, and the speakers of poems have looked at mortality as something to fear as well as embrace. What effects does this awareness of mortality have upon the speakers?

Professor’s Expectations:
Thesis: Your thesis should come near the end of your introductory paragraph and should be a direct response/answer to the question regarding the poems.
Organization: Your paper should be organized by the ideas raised by your thesis. Do not organize the paper by looking at one poem and then moving on to another poem in a series of discrete discussions. Use main points (topic sentences for your body paragraphs) that are aspects of your thesis and then use the poems to support your ideas. You will, inevitably, use one poem in several different parts of your paper.
Language: You must use five of the following terms in your paper—speaker, auditor, metaphor, ambiguity, personification, symbol, tone, setting, dramatic situation. Please underline and use boldface for the first usage of each term in your paper.
Evidence: Use at least five brief (no more than four lines in length) quotations from the poems, one from each of your five selected poems. This is an absolute minimum.
Documentation: Quotations must be documented using an in-text citation. Remember that poems are cited by line number, rather than page number in your in-text citation. You will supply a page number (or numbers) in your Works Cited entry.
Sentence writing, mechanics, and manuscript format: Please take good care of your prose; make sure you have proofread and edited your paper before you submit it. Your paper should be formatted according to MLA guidelines.
Quotations are the exact words of a writer or speaker. They are marked by quotation marks and documented by an in-text citation that is included within the sentence in which the quotation occurs. When writing about poems, use line numbers, rather than page numbers, in your in-text citation. Indicate line breaks with a slash (/). Look at the following example:

Quotation from the primary source: In the absence of faith or certainty, Arnold’s speaker declares, “Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!” (29-30), thus granting the romantic relationship greater authority than religious doctrine or philosophical consolation.

Poems to be used regarding the topic:
The Vacuum- Howard Nemerov
To His Coy Mistress- Andrew Marvell
The Leap- James Dickey
Alzheimer’s- Kelly Cherry
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner- Randall Jarrell