Online Poetry Anthology Requirements
The Anthology:
For this assignment, you will be putting together your own anthology of poems just as the editor of Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing has done in the poetry section of his book. Unlike the textbook, however, your poems must relate to one another through theme and/or subject matter. For instance, you can choose poems exploring or depicting familial relationships, the seasons, religion, rejection, human relationships with animals, your life story, warfare, hair, or tasty liquid refreshment. One caveat: Love (as a general topic) is off-limits! What I mean by this is that you shouldn’t just find five love poems (way too easy! You could, instead, describe different types of love or the stages of a romantic relationship.
As you will quickly discover, this assignment is quite a bit different from the more traditional essays that you write for this class and surely have written for other classes. With this difference, however, comes the freedom to explore and be creative. Your anthology will be in the form of a PowerPoint slideshow and will be uploaded to the discussion board by the due date for grading. You will also upload your preface, commentaries, and epilogue as a Word document into the dropbox. The dropbox cannot read PowerPoints.
The Big Picture:
· You must choose 5 poems that you like and understand (or want to understand). The poems can come from any country or time period. You should choose poems that we didn’t already discuss as a class.
Finding Your Poems/Songs:
· To choose the poems for your anthology, you could look through poetry collections and anthologies in the TTC library, resources available in other libraries, poetry pages and collections on the internet, and books/anthologies that you can access on TTC’s NetLibrary. You cannot choose all of your poems from one book, website, or collection. You must use a variety of sources. They can all be books, websites, etc., but they have to be different books, websites, etc.
· You cannot choose more than one poem by an author. All of your poems must be written by different authors. The poems must also be by published poets, not just junk from some web source. How do you know the person has been published? See if they are on Amazon or do a web search!
Formatting:
Your anthology must include the following slides: a title page, a table of contents, a preface, 5 poems with commentaries, an epilogue, and a Works Cited page.
In other words: think of the PowerPoint as a book. Here is the order of your “book”: Title Page, Table of Contents, Preface, Poem, Commentary, Poem, Commentary, Poem, Commentary, Poem, Commentary, Poem, Commentary, Epilogue, Works Cited
Requirements:
· You must type out your chosen poems onto PowerPoint slides. Use creative fonts and illustrations (clipart, photos, etc.)
· Title Page: Needs to articulate your overarching sense of the poems. Avoid such titles as “Poems” or “Poetry Anthology for English 102.” Try to find a unifying thread that connects the poems and/or your responses to the poems (This does not mean you can use the title “Poems I Like” or similar titles).
· Table of contents: Include the title, author, and slide number of each poem and commentaries as well as the slide numbers for the preface, epilogue, and Works Cited (thus, you should compose the table of contents after putting together the rest of the anthology).
· You need to organize the poems in your anthology in a thoughtful and deliberate order, something other than simply chronological or alphabetical. Note: The only way a chronological order might work is if you are tracing how poets through time have treated differently a particular subject/theme.
· Preface: Should explain what the reader should expect as far as the content of the poems and the order in which they are presented. Also explain why you chose these particular poems for the anthology. The preface should be at least 150 words in length
· Poems: With each poem, include the title, author, and either the date of composition or publication.
· Critical Commentaries: Interpret/explicate the poems (similar to what you do each week on the discussion board). These should be on a separate slide(s) following the poem. There are several approaches you can take to this critical commentary:
· Discuss the central theme(s) of the poem, especially if the theme is shared with other poems in the anthology.
· Explain what the poem says to you as a reader. In other words, explore how it “speaks to you.”
· Discuss the emotional impact of the poem and how it creates this impact.
· Explicate the images and/or symbols in the poem.
· Explain the meaning of the title.
· Explore the historical or cultural context and how it is important to the poem.
· The critical commentary for each poem should be at least 150 words in length and must include a quote from the poem/song.
· Epilogue: Evaluate more analytically the common characteristics of the poems (or how the poems differ), such as theme and subject matter, noting what patterns you see in your choices of poems. The epilogue should be at least 300 words in length. Note: The Epilogue comes after the poems and commentaries and before the Works Cited page.
· Works Cited page: Must list the bibliographical information for all of the poems in proper MLA format. Remember that you should have five different sources.
Final Thoughts:
· Remember that all of your writing will be graded on content, organizational clarity, phrasing, and grammar.
· Think about the font type(s) you use for the poems, illustrations that might accompany the poems, and even the background you use. Different font types, colors, and sizes and different illustrations can create a variety of effects. When using effects, however, try to remain true to the TONE of the poem. Using a comical font like this one for a mourning poem would prove rather discordant, no? Also, always choose readable fonts. And make sure the illustrations work thematically with the poem (a sonnet on one’s true love, for instance, probably should not be accompanied by a picture of the Grim Reaper).
· And, finally, make sure that you DO NOT conduct ANY research for this project (aside from publication years and possible historical background information). YOUR interpretations and responses are the focus of this assignment.
· If you don’t have PowerPoint, or prefer a different program, please reach out to me for approval.
