Write a 6-7 page paper (~1500-1800 words) that makes a clear, persuasive argument about at least one of the poems we have studied in this course.
While you are welcome and encouraged to develop your own argument independent of prompts, here are a few prompts that you may respond to, or that you may use to jumpstart your thinking:
1) How does the approach to form develop in the poems we have encountered in this course? How is form revised and adapted to address issues contemporaneous to the poet?
2) Throughout this course, we have been grappling with questions of impersonality and biography. With attention to at least one poem, consider how these concerns intersect, and are addressed within the poem and, potentially, beyond it.

3) Consider a major cultural development or historical event that has occurred throughout the time frame of our course. How is that development or event addressed in a contemporaneous poem? In later poems that respond to that event? What is the cultural or societal role of the poem in this context?
4) Compare and contrast two decades we have covered in class via attention to a representative poem from each decade (note: you may not pair poems already paired in the syllabus). How do the poems function differently in their contexts? How does the approach to “the poem” change, as addressed in the poems chosen?