Download Example - resources

Poetry Friday- Poetry Analysis
Assignment: In groups of three or four, you are to use the resources available to you to
search for a poem that you will respond to according to the parameters of the poetry
analysis questions in the handout you have been given. Each member of the team needs
to have a copy of your group’s answers to each of the questions that apply to your poem.
For this assignment, you do not need to answer question eight on your poetry analysis
sheet.
Example:
Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said--"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert....Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
5
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
10
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Written Response to question 7- Sample CEE paragraph for Poetry Analysis
Ozymandias- Shelley
Claim – Shelley’s poem teaches us that we must live in the now for nothing will
remain when we are gone.
Set-up – In Shelly’s famous poem, “Ozymandias”, a traveler looks over a statue of a
once great pharaoh and remarks,
Evidence – “boundless and bare, / the lone and level sands stretch far away” (781).
Explanation – The pharaoh that the statue depicts attempted to cement his legacy by
building a monument to himself that would look eternally over the civilization that he
created as a testament to his power. The statue, along with the civilization itself, decayed
as all things must and the irony of his attempt at immortality becomes clear for the
narrator and reader alike. The decay of a once great civilization shows that nothing in the
future can be counted on, so the theme of the poem is its assertion of living in the present
and taking advantage of every moment that we have on this Earth.