Poetry

randomfella

i'm having trouble 'being personal' when i'm writing a personal response in poetry and i know that this is the aspect of your answer that is most important. I can interpret the poems and discuss the poet's techniques and style but the personal bit i find hard. I'd be grateful if people could just even post up a few points. I know that in the 'pop quiz for leaving' thread someone posted up a few lines on dickinson, this kind of thing i found helpful and i lack it in my answers. Thanks!

*Angel*

To be personal in your response continously use 'I', e.g I can relate to this, I see how this is effective, I can understand where he/she is coming from.

Also you could 'put yourself in their shoes',

Don't say blah blah "you can see..." cos that isn't personal.

You can still describe the poets style and such but just put in a few comments here and there as to why this style is relevant in your mind (it wouldn't kill you to lie either, just say what sounds good).

randomfella

of course i'm not bothered about sounding like an eejit once it gets me marks!
Is it true that when u talk about their literary devices that it gives u a higher mark?

PLus that is difficult to be personal on. All i can manage is,

Dickinson
The punctuation used by dickinson helps put emphasis on certain words.
Her ryhme is in stacatto form because she draws attention to a part of the poem when she wants using the dash.
This helps me focus on the particular aspects of the poem that hold most importance.
I notice that many of her verses are in 4line stanza's, almost hymn-like. The influence of religion trickles through her poetry....


Anybody? help?

Freak Of Nature

Try using a really personal opening paragraph, and then refer to that aspect throughout your essay.
Your opening line could be a quote from a poem, then give your reaction to that quote, (your 'personal response', geddit?) what it means to you in some way, how it drew you into that particular poet's work. You can then relate the techniques used in that instance in relation to other poems.
You have to blend info with your own personal opinion - be enthusiastic, and honest if you like the poet!

the smiley one

randomfella wrote:

of course i'm not bothered about sounding like an eejit once it gets me marks!
Is it true that when u talk about their literary devices that it gives u a higher mark?

PLus that is difficult to be personal on. All i can manage is,

Dickinson
The punctuation used by dickinson helps put emphasis on certain words.
Her ryhme is in stacatto form because she draws attention to a part of the poem when she wants using the dash.
This helps me focus on the particular aspects of the poem that hold most importance.
I notice that many of her verses are in 4line stanza's, almost hymn-like. The influence of religion trickles through her poetry....
Anybody? help?

Some of it is spot on but the bit in bold isn't strictly personal, "I notice..." isn't really a good way to put across your personal views. What you could say instead is :

"Dickinson's poetry usually takes the 4 line stanza form, and when reading it, it seemed to me to be very spiritual, almost hymn-like. Indeed, the prevailent religious theme in her work drew me in as in the poem..."

Cannibal Ox

Personnal essay intro:
"Emily Dickinson is my favourite poet on the Leaving Cert Course. I find her ability to make abstract notions into concrete thoughts fantastic (i.e, Hope is the Thing with Feathers), and her ability to take grand themes such as nature and death (Fly) and personnalize them in a particularly Dickinson way very enjoyable. I find her ability to deal with issues such as stress (Funeral in my Brain) of particular interest to myself, as I can easily relate to it (when your writing about the poem, mention how you can relate cause of stress from Leaving Cert). I also find her writing style to be of particular interest, her use of dashes and capital letters is remarkable. She seems to point out words of importance with her use of capital letters (use an example), and her dashes allow me to see her almost thinking on the page."

That's almost my opening paragraph to a personnal essay. I have the part about her punctuation in a small paragraph after the opener with a bit more detal and a quote.
When your doing your practice essay, I'd recommend trying to come up with a sentence or two on how you relate to the poem. It doesn't have to be the truth, infact it's probably better if it's not, but it should help "personnalise" the overall essay. As long as you keep using "I", "I find", "I enjoy", "My favourite" you'll be fine.

randomfella

Thanks few good points made there. I'll prob type up a sample response and post it, to see what people think. i know its been discussed in other forums but how many poems are u discussing? i'm going with 4 in detail rather than the 6 my teacher told us.

for instance when i say there is a 'slant' in her poetry i refer to a poem but i'm not discussing that in detail. Is that acceptable?

the smiley one

yeah I find it really hard to gage how many poems the answer needs. I think I'm just goin to see how much time I have probably bout 3/4 in detail and mention a couple others. It would take aaaaaages to do 6!!! :eek: Don't think that's a good idea!

On a totally unrelated topic, I should be studying right now.... ah well, 5 more mins....

angeldelight

I'd say do 4 in detail, if you try to do 6 you might end up skimming over the 6 rather than having time to analyse them. I would learn the 6 though rather than just forgetting about 2 of them cause then you can pick which ones best apply and also you can mention the others in passing to add depth to a point

Rredwell

I think that the note on the fron tof the Geography paper can be applied here:
"In discussion-type answers, it is better to treat three or four points in some detail, rather than a superficial treatment of a large bumber of points."

Just substitute poems for points!