What is home within your chosen poem or poems?

Choose at least two poems to help you think and write about home. Vivid writing requires some specific images, sights, sounds, smells, or dialogue. Notice how specific these poems are? Be specific when you write about them.
Read the questions below. These questions are meant to help you write about the poems. There are a multitude of ways to write about a subject and each question below will not apply to all the poems.
Do not waste time being frustrated by a question; move on to the next question and see if it helps you understand any of the poems.
Do not pick a poem that does not speak to you. By the way, do not shy away from a poem that is long. The easiest and most charming poem in this group is the longest one.
Here are questions to help you frame this short interactive essay (a discussion post). If you do not find one that helps you to understand your poem, the create your own questions (they should have some depth) and answer them. Good questions can help lead you to a topic for your interactive essay.
What is home within your chosen poem or poems? People? Places? Things? Feelings? Something else?
If your poem is written by someone from another country or culture, how does that affect your understanding of the idea of home as a universal human longing?
These writers (along with moviemakers, artists, and musicians) depict home ( or whatever subject) in different ways. Do any of these poems show the value of home in an unusual way — by its absence or by the longing for home or by something else? Or what about a series of events that show the atmosphere of the home without ever saying anything directly about home? This can be a very powerful way of telling a story.
What is the relationship of location or place or architecture to our idea of home? Do any of these poems depict the effect of location, place or architecture on the speaker’s idea of home?
These questions are to help you come up with ideas to write about, but your post is not to be simply question and answer.
Use the ideas discussed in Let’s Talk About Writing to help you organize around your ideas from the poems and your own ideas about home. Create a thesis statement which should appear near the end of your first paragraph. Note: It is easier to write a great intro after you have finished the rest of your paper – or at least after you have a good thesis statement
Then write a substantive response to two classmates’ posts. Substantive means a genuine response that shows attention and thought about the content of your peer’s post. “Great job!” or “Yea, me too.” is not substantive though it may be kind and encouraging. I consider your discussion post and responses to be an interactive essay, and I will grade it as such.
If you quote from your poem, be sure you quote no more than a line or two at the time. Mention the poet’s last name in the sentence introducing your quotation. Makes sure you know the poet’s last name and use that name or first and last names together to refer to the poet. Do not refer to your poet solely by his or her first name (-10 points).
This post will be the springboard for your first formal paper. This discussion post will count as part of your composition grade which means that it is significant. Composition makes up 70% of your grade.
Your post should be 500 words basically correct in grammar and punctuation, and your own work (not copied from an internet site). Your two responses to classmates (you may certainly write more than two but you will be graded on two) should be 25-50 words.
Use what you know about writing an essay to craft a good essay for this Discussion post. If you need help or a review as you write, be sure to consult your text. The table of contents is linked to the appropriate sections in the book. For example, if you struggle with writing paragraphs go to this link Introduction to Writing Paragraphs.
You must start a thread by posting your discussion before you can see the posts of others. If you are the first one to post, you will have to wait until others post to make your responses — obviously. Do NOT post a word or two, so that you can view others’ posts and then come back with one of your own. That is an automatic F.
A good job on this discussion will help you with your first formal essay, because we will be looking at these same poems plus stories.
You must start a thread before you can read and reply to other threads

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