====== Short Essay - Evaluation ======

Due Tuesday, Nov 8 - class time. 

This essay will be a very short evaluation of a poem.  If you sometimes read movie or music reviews, you could think of this as a capsule review. It serves as a warm-up for your thesis paper. It gives me the chance to see more formal writing than what you've shared in Teams or Perusall. But it also gives you a chance to get comfortable with my evaluative criteria (__Content__, __Organization__, __Mechanics__.)  I'll use the same basic framework for your Thesis Paper, except that we'll have time for multiple drafts and so you will also get graded on __Revision__ then. 

You will 1) refer to a literary example; 2) draw on a critical source and 3) make an evaluative claim. 

Your goal is to show that you can make a persuasive case for the value you would assign to a work based on your reading of it but supported by the criteria you share with a critic ([[https://app.perusall.com/courses/sherwood-hnrc-101-unitb-fall2022/value_evaluation-barbara_hernstein_smith-2|Barbara Herrnstein Smith]] or [[https://app.perusall.com/courses/sherwood-hnrc-101-unitb-fall2022/how_to_read_literature-terry-eagleton-ch6|Terry Eagleton]]). 

Your essay should include just two sources: a poet and a critic.

Choose any modernist or postmodern work we have looked at (William Carlos Williams, from Week 1; Rupi Kaur poem; John Cage mesostic; Duchamp poem; or any other piece from the //The Blind Man//).

Consider what you learned from one of the two critics we studied that could help you make a case for the value of the work. (You do not have to argue it is a timeless masterpiece. You can argue it is an ambitious failure, or an trivial success. You could consider that is succeeds as a Romantic poem but not as a Modernist one. You can argue that it conveys something of beauty but only for a certain audience, evokes emotion but does not make use of literary form, etc. ) 

===== Organization =====

To keep this assignment very simple, I'm going to ask you to write just three well developed paragraphs (350 words max). 

  - Intro: Paragraph one - introduce the poem you will discuss. Give an overview, summary or characterization of its topic, style, etc. Make clear the author's name and smoothly incorporate a **brief quotation**.
  - Criteria: Paragraph two - outline the approach to evaluating the piece which you are taking, with specific reference to either Smith or Eagleton. In other words, **you must define what things most count for you**, in this essay, evaluating this poem with the support of a critical source.  You should either paraphrase or quote briefly from the critic. 
  - Application: Paragraph three - explain your judgement of the poem based on the criteria above. Aim to persuade your reader. You might quote selectively here too. 

[[weeksb:gallery_of_modernist_and_postmodern_poems|Gallery of Poems]]

===== Format =====

Use simple MLA format for the essay, and cite your sources using your preferred in-text citation method (MLA, APA, etc.) 

{{ :weeksb:simple-mla-format.png?600 |}}