Use examples and quotes to support ALL your claims. Papers should be four pages in length. If you have questions about something, mark it with an asterisk and state why you are confused, and I will not take off for it. Compare two poems that approach a similar topic. I solate a theme in the text and show how the work seeks to resolve the problems, ambiguities and ironies it proposes.
All great literature is meant to entertain as well as to inform.
Read slowly and carefully and demonstrate how the figures of speech, point of view, diction, recurrent ideas or events work toward that theme. Make sure you can state the theme as a sentence, and try to avoid the overtly obvious. Move very slowly through the text and explain how you interpret each part of the poem. React to the text as a whole, but you may want to consider how other readers would interpret this poem. Research the poet's life or literary tradition.