Poetry Project

Major Paper #4: Poetry Project
Students will select an American poet from the list provided. They will be asked to read a
collection of poems by the poet, a biography or compilation containing biographical information about the poet, and a work of critical analysis by an established scholar about the poet. (The 7-10 page paper with MLA citation should contain introductory biographical information about the poet (1-2 pages), and then a close reading and analysis of two of the poet’s major poems. The analysis of the poems should focus on the use of rhetorical devices such as voice, form, figurative language, and other poetic devices such as imagery, rhyme and meter. In doing scholarly research, students should also be able to cite commentary on the poems from published scholars. Internet sources must be kept to a minimum and cited properly.)
List of poets to choose from:

The Poets
There are 161 poet companion sites below.
The poems analyzed are available in
Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford)

a
Ai
Sherman Alexie
Angel Island Poetry
A. R. Ammons
John Ashbery

b
Jimmy Santiago Baca
Amiri Baraka
John Beecher
Gwendolyn Bennett
John Berryman
Elizabeth Bishop
Paul Blackburn
Robert Bly
Louise Bogan
Arna Bontemps
Kay Boyle
William Bronk
Gwendolyn Brooks
Sterling A. Brown

c
Gladys May Casley-Hayford (Aquah LaLuah)
Ana Castillo
Marilyn Chin
Sandra Cisneros
Lucille Clifton
Gregory Corso
Jayne Cortez
Hart Crane
Robert Creeley
Harry Crosby
Countee Cullen
E. E. Cummings

d
Joy Davidman
James Dickey
Emily Dickinson
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)
Mark Doty
Rita Dove
Henry Dumas
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Robert Duncan

e
T. S. Eliot
Anita Endrezze
Louise Erdrich
Martìn Espada
William Everson

f
Kenneth Fearing
Carolyn Forché
Sesshu Foster
Charles Henri Ford
Joseph Freeman
Robert Frost
Sol Funaroff

g
Allen Ginsberg
Louise Glück
Judy Grahn
Angelina Weld Grimké

h
Michael S. Harper
Robert Hass
Jessica Hagedorn
Sadakichi Hartmann
Robert Hayden
Anthony Hecht
Garrett Hongo
Susan Howe
Langston Hughes

i
Lawson Fusao Inada

j
Laura (Riding) Jackson
Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku
Randall Jarrell
Robinson Jeffers
V. J. Jerome
Georgia Douglas Johnson
James Weldon Johnson

k
Joseph Kalar
Bob Kaufman
Weldon Kees
Galway Kinnell
Etheridge Knight
Yusef Komunyakaa
Aaron Kramer
Maxine Kumin
Stanley Kunitz

l
Aquah LaLuah (Gladys May Casely-Hayford)
Denise Levertov
Philip Levine
Vachel Lindsay
Audre Lorde
Adrian C. Louis
Amy Lowell
Robert Lowell
Mina Loy

m
Archibald MacLeish
Edwin Markham
Edgar Lee Masters
Thomas McGrath
Claude McKay
James Merrill
W. S. Merwin
Edna St. Vincent Millay
N. Scott Momaday
Marianne Moore
Thylias Moss
Harryette Mullen

n
Lorine Niedecker
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o
Frank O'Hara
Sharon Olds
Mary Oliver
Tillie Olsen
Charles Olson
George Oppen

P
Michael Palmer
Dorothy Parker
Robert Pinsky
Sylvia Plath
Ezra Pound

r
Carl Rakosi
Dudley Randall
John Crowe Ransom
Ishmael Reed
Kenneth Rexroth
Charles Reznikoff
Adrienne Rich
Lola Ridge
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Carolyn M. Rodgers
Theodore Roethke
Edwin Rolfe
Wendy Rose
Muriel Rukeyser

s
Carl Sandburg
Anne Sexton
Ron Silliman
Patricia Smith
Welton Smith
Gary Snyder
Herman Spector
Anne Spencer
William Stafford
Gertrude Stein
Wallace Stevens
Ruth Stone
Mark Strand

t
Genevieve Taggard
Allen Tate
Melvin B. Tolson
Jean Toomer
Lucia Trent

v
Mona Van Duyn
Paul Violi

W
Margaret Walker
Robert Penn Warren
John Wheelwright
Walt Whitman
Richard Wilbur
William Carlos Williams
Yvor Winters
C.D. Wright
Charles Wright
James Wright
Richard Wright

y
Ray A. Young Bear
z
Louis Zukofsky


John Ashberry
Margaret Atwood
W. H. Auden
Amiri Baraka
Elizabeth Bishop
Anne Bradstreet
Gwendolyn Brooks
Lucille Clifton
Billy Collins
Hart Crane
E. E. Cummings
Emily Dickinson
Rita Dove
T. S. Eliot
Robert Frost
Jane Hirschfield
Henry W. Longfellow
W. S. Merwin
Marianne Moore
Mary Oliver
Sylvia Plath
Ezra Pound
Theordore Roethke
Carl Sandburg
William Stafford
Wallace Stevens
Mark Strand
Richard Wilbur
C. K. Williams
James Wright

and others that you would like to cover

Mark Strand dibs!

If no one else has claimed Carl Sandburg yet, I think I'm doing him.

James Wright ftw!... at least I hope that's who I think it is...

T.S.E

Sylvia Plath.

Ishmael Reed

E.E. Cummings

Ted Kooser!

Nooooooooo, someone took E. E. Cummings!

Once again...W.H. Auden.

Jane Hirschfield

Langston Hughes

I'm totally surprised no one took Emily Dickinson!!!! I got dibs

Rita Dove

I'm doing Rilke!

Mary Oliver!

Is anyone doing E.B. White?

Walt Whitman!

whoohooo!

Ezra Pound

i'm doing Amiri Baraka