Literary Analysis Project

 For this project, you will take a turn teaching a lesson. Here’s how it will work: •First, you will pick and order one of the following works: ◦ Service, by Bruce Lack (ISBN: 978-0896729209) ◦ The Shallow End of Sleep by Jose Antonio Rodriguez (ISBN: 978-1882688418) ◦ How to Be Drawn By Terrance Hayes (ISBN: 978-0143126881) ◦ Balloon Pop Outlaw Black by Patricia Lockwood (ISBN: 978-0985118228) ◦(The easiest way to get ahold of one of these books is through Amazon, but you might also check local library stock, just in case. These are new books by well regarded contemporary poets, and any one is fine to use. If you have another contemporary poet you are interested in, you can always check with me to see if it’s ok to use that poet’s work. I’ll let you know but check with me first. Finally, before you order, make sure the book will arrive in time for you to complete the assignment) •Second, you need to: ◦read as much as you can about the author (googling is fine for author research) ◦read the book, and pick three poems you’d like to analyze. •Finally, you need to put together a powerpoint presentation like those I’ve put together for you over the semester. You are used to these now, and you should follow the basic format: ◦One slide for relevant author biographical information. ◾We don’t need to know everything about the author. Some of these poets are not even that well-known and don’t have things like Wikipedia pages. You can use things like interviews that you find online, info from the back of the book about the author, etc…. Also, whatever you can find on google is probably ok. Just be sure that you pick two or three biographical details that you think are MOST relevant to understanding the poet’s work. Sum these up with bullet points, or however you see best fit, and add a little audio recording to clarify your bullet points with discussion. ◦One slide for an overview of the author’s major themes. ◾This slide should simply point to patterns that you notice in the author’s work overall–over all the poems in the collection, and maybe even in other places (poems you’ve found online, other works, etc…) ◾You should pick two or three major themes to focus on. For instance, in Bruce Lack’s poetry in Service, you will probably find that many of the poems are devoted to recounting his experiences as a soldier in war, so it would be appropriate to discuss war as a theme in his work). Again, you should provide audio for this, with some elaboration of your thinking. ◦Three slides focusing on individual poems. ◾Pick three poems you’d like to analyze further, and devote one slide to each, breaking down the poem, focusing on major issues in the poem. ◾Major issues may arise because of the content of the poem–the ideas being expressed. ◾Major issues may arise because of the structure of the poem–the way it the ideas are presented or put together. ◾For each of these slides, use two or three bullet points with text that clarifies the major issues, and again provide some audio to provide context. Here are the requirements in sum: A Powerpoint slide presentation on the book of your choosing with one slide devoted to author biography, one to major themes in the author’s work and three slides devoted to discussion of individual poems (the poems are of your choosing). Each slide should have two to three bullet points focusing the reader’s attention on what you want to highlight.