Poetry+Resources

 Sample Poetry Essay Prompts:

Read the following poem carefully. Then write an essay in which you discuss how use of language in the poem determines the reader’s response to the speaker and his situation.

Read the following poem carefully. Then write an essay in which you discuss the ways in which the author’s style (diction, imagery, selection of detail) reveals his feeling about what he recalls and cannot remember about his youth.

Read the following poem carefully. Write an essay in which you discuss how the choice of detail, diction, and syntax are used to reveal the speaker’s attitude to the subject.

Read the following poem carefully. Then write a cohesive essay in which you show how the language of each stanza reveals the perceptions and feelings of the speaker.

Read the following poem by carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you briefly summarize its content and discuss how the diction and imagery reveal the speaker’s attitude toward _.

Write a well-organized essay in which you discuss how the imagery of the last __ _( number)___ stanzas is related to and different from the imagery of the first ___(number)___ stanzas. Explain how this difference determines the tone and meaning of the poem as a whole.

Read carefully the following poem by about __. Then write an essay in which you describe the speaker’s attitude toward__ _. Using specific references to the text, show how the use of language reveals the speaker’s attitude.

In the following passage, which comes from the author’s autobiographical poem ___, the speaker encounters unfamiliar aspects of the natural world. Write an essay in which you trace the speaker’s //changing responses// to his experience and explain how they are conveyed by the poem’s diction, imagery, and tone.__ __ Read carefully the following poem by _____. Then write a well-organized essay in which you discuss how the poem’s controlling metaphor expresses the complex attitude of the speaker. __ = =

= __The following two poems are about__ _. Read the two poems carefully. Considering such elements as speaker, diction, imagery, form, and tone, write a well-organized essay in which you compare and contrast the speakers’ views of _ _. =