Today we did a quick review for the midterm exam. On this exam there will be three essay prompts and you'll be asked to choose and answer one. The three prompts are based on the following four poems:
Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress"
Donne's "The Flea"
Hughes' "Theme for English B"
Soto's "Mexicans Begin Jogging"
These prompts will ask something along the lines of:
1. is the speaker in Marvell's poem a smooth operator
2. are the women addressed by the speakers in Marvell's and Donne's poems realistic or imaginary
3. how do the speakers in Hughes' and Soto's poems deal with issues of being American
Dear Ms. B,
ReplyDeleteQuestion about the speaker's "role":
When referring to Soto's and Hughes' poems how would you start the analysis? Would you say that "the speaker in Soto's poem ... " or would you say "Soto writes....".
Sirkku
I'm assuming that the two questions are asking the same thing, and the second is rephrasing the first one? This is a good questions and the answer to this is in the poems. But we also mentioned this in class last Wednesday. The speaker and poet are not the same person; the fist is a poetic device essentially created by the poet. But if you look closely at the content of Soto's poem, specifically line six, it suggests that in this poem the poet is the speaker. This is something you could focus on as one aspect of your analysis of how the issues of Americanness is dealt with in "Mexicans Begin Jogging."
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