FICTION
1. READING A STORY
Fable, Parable, and Tales
W. Somerset Maugham, The Appointment in Samarra
* Aesop, The North Wind and the Sun
Bidpai, The Camel and His Friends
Chuang Tzu, Independence
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Godfather Death
Plot
The Short Story
John Updike, A & P
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
John Updike, Why Write?
Writing About Plot
Paying Attention to Plot
Checklist: Analyzing Plot
Writing Assignment on Plot
More Topics For Writing
2. POINT OF VIEW
William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily
* Anne Tyler, Teenage Wasteland
James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues
Alice Walker, Everyday Use
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
James Baldwin, Race and the African American Writer
Writing About Point of View
How Point of View Shapes a Story
Checklist: Understanding Point of View
Writing Assignment on Point of View
More Topics For Writing
3. CHARACTER
Katherine Anne Porter, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill
* Tobias Wolff, The Rich Brother
Raymond Carver, Cathedral
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Raymond Carver, Commonplace but Precise Language
Writing About Character
How Character Creates Action
Checklist: Writing About Character
Writing Assignment on Character
More Topics For Writing
4. SETTING
Kate Chopin, The Storm
T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake
Amy Tan, A Pair of Tickets
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Amy Tan, Setting the Voice
Writing About Setting
The Importance of Setting
Checklist: Analyzing Setting
Writing Assignment on Setting
More Topics For Writing
5. TONE AND STYLE
Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place
William Faulkner, Barn Burning
Irony
* O. Henry, Gift of the Magi
Ha Jin, Saboteur
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Ernest Hemingway, The Direct Style
Writing About Tone and Style
Be Style Conscious
Checklist: Thinking about Style and Tone
Writing Assignment on Tone and Style
More Topics For Writing
6. THEME
Chinua Achebe, Dead Men's Path
* Alice Munro, How I Met My Husband
Luke 15: 11-32, The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Harrison Bergeron
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., The Themes of Science Fiction
Writing About Theme
Stating the Theme
Checklist: Determining a Story's Theme
Writing Assignment on Theme
More Topics For Writing
7. SYMBOL
John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
Elizabeth Tallent, No One's a Mystery
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
* Shirley Jackson, Reactions to "The Lottery"
Writing About Symbols
Recognizing Symbols
Checklist: Thinking about Symbols
Writing Assignment on Symbols
Student Essay, An Analysis of the Symbolism in Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums"
More Topics For Writing
8. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor, Revelation
Flannery O'Connor on Writing
Flannery O'Connor, An Excerpt from "On Her Own Work": The Element of Suspense in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
Flannery O'Connor, On Her Catholic Faith
Flannery O'Connor, An Excerpt from "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction": The Serious Writer and the Tired Reader
Critics on Flannery O'Connor
Robert Brinkmeyer Jr., Flannery O'Connor and Her Readers
J. O. Tate, A Good Source Is Not so Hard to Find: The Real Life Misfit
Mary Jane Schenck, Deconstructing "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
Kathleen Feeley, The Prophet in O'Connor's "Revelation"
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writing About an Author
How One Story Illuminates Another
Checklist: Reading an Author in Depth
Writing Assignment on an Author
More Topics For Writing
9. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: 2 Stories in Depth
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe on Writing
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tale and Its Effect
Edgar Allan Poe, On Imagination
Edgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy of Composition
Critics on "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Daniel Hoffman, The Father-Figure in "The Tell-Tale Heart"
* Scott Peeples, "The Tell-Tale Heart" as a Love Story
* John Chua, The Figure of the Double in Poe
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Writing
* Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"
* Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Whatever Is
* Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Nervous Breakdown of Women
Critics on "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Juliann Fleenor, Gender and Pathology in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
* Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Imprisonment and Escape: The Psychology of Confinement
* Elizabeth Ammons, Biographical Echoes in "The Yellow Wallpaper"
10. STORIES FOR FURTHER READING
Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings
Jorge Luis Borges, The Gospel According to Mark
* John Cheever, The Five-Forty-Eight
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
* Dagoberto Gilb, Look on the Bright Side
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown
Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat
James Joyce, Araby
Franz Kafka, Before the Law
Jamaica Kincaid, Girl
D. H. Lawrence, The Rocking-Horse Winner
Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?
Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
* Octavio Paz, My Life with the Wave
Leslie Marmon Silko, The Man to Send Rain Clouds
* Helena Maria Viramontes, The Moths
* Eudora Welty, The Worn Path
POETRY
11. READING A POEM
William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Lyric Poetry
D. H. Lawrence, Piano
Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Narrative Poetry
Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spence
Robert Frost, "Out, Out-"
Dramatic Poetry
Robert Browning, My Last Duchess
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Adrienne Rich, Recalling "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"
Writing a Paraphrase
Can a Poem be Paraphrased?
William Stafford, Ask Me
William Stafford, A Paraphrase of "Ask Me"
Checklist: Paraphrasing a Poem
Writing Assignment on Paraphrase
More Topics For Writing
12. LISTENING TO A VOICE
Tone
Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz
Countee Cullen, For a Lady I Know
Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book
Walt Whitman, To a Locomotive in Winter
Emily Dickinson, I like to see it lap the Miles
Benjamin Alire Saenz, To the Desert
Weldon Kees, For My Daughter
The Person in the Poem
Natasha Trethewey, White Lies
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Luke Havergal
Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting
* Suji Kwock Kim, Monologue for an Onion
William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
Dorothy Wordsworth, Journal Entry
Anne Sexton, Her Kind
William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow
Irony
Robert Creeley, Oh No
W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen
Sharon Olds, Rites of Passage
Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Golf Links
* Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second Fig
Thomas Hardy, The Workbox
For Review and Further Study
William Blake, The Chimney Sweeper
William Stafford, At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border
Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta
Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Wilfred Owen, War Poetry
Writing About Voice
Listening to Tone
Checklist: Analyzing Tone
Writing Assignment on Tone
Student Essay, Word Choice, Tone, and Point of View in Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"
More Topics For Writing
13. WORDS
Literal Meaning: What a Poem Says First
William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say
Marianne Moore, Silence
Robert Graves, Down, Wanton, Down!
John Donne, Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You
The Value of a Dictionary
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Aftermath
J. V. Cunningham, Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead
Kelly Cherry, Advice to a Friend Who Paints
Carl Sandburg, Grass
Word Choice and Word Order
Robert Herrick, Upon Julia's Clothes
Kay Ryan, Blandeur
Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid
Richard Eberhart, The Fury of Aerial Bombardment
Wendy Cope, Lonely Hearts
For Review and Further Study
E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town
Anonymous, Carnation Milk
* Kenneth Rexroth, Vitamins and Roughage
* Gina Valdes, English con Salsa
Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Lewis Carroll, Humpty Dumpty Explicates "Jabberwocky"
Writing About Diction
Every Word Counts
Checklist: Thinking About Word Choice
Writing Assignment on Word Choice
More Topics For Writing
14. SAYING AND SUGGESTING
John Masefield, Cargoes
William Blake, London
Wallace Stevens, Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock
* Gwendolyn Brooks, Southeast Corner
Timothy Steele, Epitaph
* E. E. Cummings, next to of course to god america i
Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
Clare Rossini, Final Love Note
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears
Richard Wilbur, Love Calls Us to the Things of This World
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Richard Wilbur, Concerning "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World"
Writing About Denotation and Connotation
The Ways a Poem Suggests
Checklist: Analyzing What a Poem Says and Suggests
Writing Assignment on Denotation and Connotation
More Topics For Writing
15. IMAGERY
Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro
Taniguchi Buson, The piercing chill I feel
T. S. Eliot, The winter evening settles down
Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar
Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish
Anne Stevenson, The Victory
Emily Dickinson, A Route of Evanescence
* Jean Toomer, Reapers
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty
About Haiku
Arakida Moritake, The falling flower
Matsuo Basho, Heat-lightning streak
Matsuo Basho, In the old stone pool
Taniguchi Buson, On the one-ton temple bell
Taniguchi Buson, I go
Kobayashi Issa, only one guy
Kobayashi Issa, Cricket
Haiku from Japanese Internment Camps
Suiko Matsushita, Rain shower from mountain
Neiji Ozawa, War forced us from California
Hakuro Wada, Even the croaking of frogs
Contemporary American Haiku
Etheridge Knight, Making jazz swing in
Lee Gurga, Visitor's Room
Penny Harter, broken bowl
John Ridland, The Lazy Man's Haiku
* Garry Gay, Hole in the ozone
* Adelle Foley, Learning to Shave
Jennifer Brutschy,Born Again
Connie Bensley, Last Haiku
For Review and Further Study
John Keats, Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
Walt Whitman, The Runner
T. C. Hulme, The Image
* William Carlos Williams, El Hombre
Chana Bloch, Tired Sex
Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
* Rita Dove, Silos
* Louise Gluck, Mock Orange
* Billy Collins, Embrace
Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Ezra Pound, The Image
Writing About Imagery
Analyzing Images
Checklist: Thinking About Imagery
Writing Assignment On Imagery
Student Essay, Elizabeth Bishop's Use of Imagery in "The Fish"
More Topics For Writing
16. FIGURES OF SPEECH
Why Speak Figuratively?
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle
William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Howard Moss, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
Metaphor and Simile
Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall
William Blake, To see a world in a grain of sand
Sylvia Plath, Metaphors
N. Scott Momaday, Simile
Other Figures of Speech
James Stephens, The Wind
Margaret Atwood, You fit into me
John Ashbery, The Cathedral Is
* Dana Gioia, Money
* Charles Simic, My Shoes
For Review and Further Study
Robert Frost, The Silken Tent
* April Lindner, Low Tide
Jane Kenyon, The Suitor
Robert Frost, The Secret Sits
A. R. Ammons, Coward
* Heather McHugh, Language Lesson, 1976
Robert Burns, Oh, my love is like a red, red rose
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Robert Frost, The Importance of Poetic Metaphor
Writing About Metaphors
How Metaphors Enlarge a Poem's Meaning
Checklist: Analyzing Metaphor
Writing Assignment on Figures of Speech
More Topics For Writing
17. SONG
Singing and Saying
Ben Jonson, To Celia
Anonymous, The Cruel Mother
* William Shakespeare, O Mistress Mine
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Richard Cory
Paul Simon, Richard Cory
Ballads
Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan
Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham
Blues
Bessie Smith with Clarence Williams, Jailhouse Blues
W. H. Auden, Funeral Blues
Rap
Run D.M.C., from Peter Piper
For Review and Further Study
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Eleanor Rigby
* Aimee Mann, Deathly
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Paul McCartney, Creating "Eleanor Rigby"
Writing About Song Lyrics
Poetry's Close Kinship with Song
Checklist: Looking at Lyrics as Poetry
Writing Assignment on Song Lyrics
More Topics For Writing
18. SOUND
Sound as Meaning
Alexander Pope, True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance
William Butler Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?
John Updike, Recital
William Wordsworth, A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
* Aphra Behn, When Maidens Are Young
Alliteration and Assonance
A. E. Housman, Eight O'Clock
James Joyce, All Day I Hear
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The splendor falls on castle walls
Rime
William Cole, On my boat on Lake Cayuga
Hilaire Belloc, The Hippopotamus
* Ogden Nash, The Panther
Gerard Manley Hopkins, God's Grandeur
Fred Chappell, Narcissus and Echo
Reading and Hearing Poems Aloud
Michael Stillman, In Memoriam John Coltrane
William Shakespeare, Full fathom five thy father lies
Chryss Yost, Lai with Sounds of Skin
T. S. Eliot, Virginia
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
T. S. Eliot, The Music of Poetry
Writing About Sound
Listen to the Music
Checklist: Writing About a Poem's Sounds
Writing Assignment on Sound
More Topics For Writing
19. RHYTHM
Stresses and Pauses
Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break
Ben Jonson, Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears
Dorothy Parker, Resume
Meter
Max Beerbohm, On the imprint of the first English edition of The Works of Max Beerbohm
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Counting-out Rhyme
A. E. Housman, When I was one-and-twenty
* William Carlos Williams, Smell!
Walt Whitman, Beat! Beat! Drums!
David Mason, Song of the Powers
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Gwendolyn Brooks, Hearing "We Real Cool"
Writing About Rhythm
Freeze-Framing the Sound
Checklist: Scanning a Poem
Writing Assignment on Rhythm
More Topics For Writing
20. CLOSED FORM
Formal Patterns
John Keats, This living hand, now warm and capable
Robert Graves, Counting the Beats
John Donne, Song ("Go and catch a falling star")
Phillis Levin, Brief Bio
The Sonnet
William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds
* Michael Drayton, Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part
Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why
Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night
Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You
A. E. Stallings, Sine Qua Non
* R. S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet
The Epigram
Alexander Pope, Sir John Harrington, Langston Hughes, J. V. Cunningham, Stevie Smith, Anonymous, A selection of epigrams
Other Forms
Robert Pinsky, ABC
Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night
Robert Bridges, Triolet
Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
* A. E. Stallings, On Form and Artifice
Writing About Form
Turning Points
Checklist: Thinking About a Sonnet
Writing Assignment on a Sonnet
More Topics For Writing
21. OPEN FORM
Denise Levertov, Ancient Stairway
E. E. Cummings, Buffalo Bill 's
W. S. Merwin, For the Anniversary of My Death
Stephen Crane, The Heart
Walt Whitman, Cavalry Crossing a Ford
* Ezra Pound, Salutation
Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
Prose Poetry
* Charles Simic, The Magic Study of Happiness
Visual Poetry
George Herbert, Easter Wings
John Hollander, Swan and Shadow
Seeing the Logic of Open Form Verse
E. E. Cummings, in Just-
Carole Satyamurti, I Shall Paint My Nails Red
* Alice Fulton, Failure
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Walt Whitman, The Poetry of the Future
Writing About Free Verse
Lining Up for Free Verse
Checklist: Analyzing Line Breaks in Free Verse
Writing Assignment on Open Form
More Topics For Writing
22. SYMBOL
T. S. Eliot, The Boston Evening Transcript
Emily Dickinson, The Lightning is a yellow Fork
Thomas Hardy, Neutral Tones
Matthew 13:24-30, The Parable of the Good Seed
George Herbert, The World
* Edwin Markham, Outwitted
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Christina Rossetti, Uphill
For Review and Further Study
William Carlos Williams, The Term
Ted Kooser, Carrie
Jane Hirshfield, Tree
Lorine Niedecker, Popcorn-can cover
Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
William Butler Yeats, Poetic Symbols
Writing About Symbols
Reading a Symbol
Checklist: Analyzing a Symbol
Writing Assignment on Symbolism
More Topics For Writing
23. MYTH
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay
William Wordsworth, The World Is Too Much with Us
H. D., Helen
Archetype
Louise Bogan, Medusa
* John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Personal Myth
William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming
Myth and Popular Culture
* Andrea Hollander Budy, Snow White
Anne Sexton, Cinderella
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Anne Sexton, Transforming Fairy Tales
Writing About Myth
Demystifying Myth
Checklist: Thinking About Myth
Writing Assignment on Myth
More Topics For Writing
24. POETRY AND PERSONAL IDENTITY
Sylvia Plath, Lady Lazarus
Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual / Bilingue
Culture, Race, and Ethnicity
Claude McKay, America
Samuel Menashe, The Shrine Whose Shape I Am
Francisco X. Alarcon, The X in My Name
Judith Ortiz Cofer, Quinceanera
* Amy Uyematsu, Deliberate
Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It
Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Learning to love America
Gender
Anne Stevenson, Sous-Entendu
Donald Justice, Men at Forty
Adrienne Rich, Women
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Rhina Espaillat, Being a Bilingual Writer
Writing About the Poetry of Personal Identity
Poetic Voice and Personal Identity
Checklist: Writing About Voice and Personal Identity
Writing Assignment on Personal Identity
More Topics For Writing
25. Poetry in Spanish: Literature of Latin America
Sor Juana
Asegura la Confianza de que Ocultura de todo un Secreto
Translated by Diane Thiel, She Promises to Hold a Secret in Confidence
Presente en que el Carino Hace Regalo la Llaneza
Translated by Diane Thiel, A Simple Gift Made Rich by Affection
Pablo Neruda
Muchos Somos
Translated by Alastair Reid, We Are Many
Cien Sonetos de Amor (V)
Translated by Stephen Tapscott, One Hundred Love Sonnets (V)
Jorge Luis Borges
Amorosa Anticipacion
Translated by Robert Fitzgerald, Anticipation of Love
Los Engimas
Translated by John Updike, The Enigmas
Octavio Paz
Con los Ojos Cerrados
Translated by Eliot Weinberger, With Our Eyes Shut
Certeza
Translated by Charles Tomlinson, Certainty
Surrealism in Latin American Poetry
Frida Kahlo, Two Friedas
Cesar Vallejo, La Colera que Quiebra al Hombre en Ninos
Cesar Vallejo, translated by Thomas Merton, Anger
Writers on Writing
Octavio Paz, In Search of the Present
Writers on Translating
Alastair Reid, Translating Neruda
Writing Assignment on Spanish Poetry
More Topics For Writing
26. RECOGNIZING EXCELLENCE
Anonymous, O Moon, when I gaze on thy beautiful face
Grace Treasone, Life
Emily Dickinson, A Dying Tiger - moaned for Drink
Rod McKuen, Thoughts on Capital Punishment
William Stafford, Traveling Through the Dark
Recognizing Excellence
William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium
Arthur Guiterman, On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias
Robert Hayden, The Whipping
Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
Evaluating Famous Poems
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus
* Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask
Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Edgar Allan Poe, A Long Poem Does Not Exist
Writing an Evaluation
You Be the Judge
Checklist: Evaluating a Poem
Writing Assignment on Evaluating a Poem
More Topics For Writing
27. WHAT IS POETRY?
Dante, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, J. V. Cunningham, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, William Stafford, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Bly, Some Definitions of Poetry
28. TWO CRITICAL CASEBOOKS: EMILY DICKINSON AND LANGSTON HUGHES
Emily Dickinson
Success is counted sweetest
* I taste a liquor never brewed
Wild Nights - Wild Nights!
I Felt a Funeral, in my Brain
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
* I Dwell in Possibility
The Soul selects her own Society
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church
After great pain, a formal feeling comes
I heard a Fly buzz - when I died
Because I could not stop for Death
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant
Emily Dickinson on Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson, Recognizing Poetry
Emily Dickinson, Self-Description
Critics on Emily Dickinson
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Meeting Emily Dickinson
Thomas H. Johnson, The Discovery of Emily Dickinson's Manuscripts
Richard Wilbur, The Three Privations of Emily Dickinson
Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Dickinson and Death (A Reading of "Because I could not stop for Death")
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Mother to Son
Dream Variations
I, Too
The Weary Blues
Song for a Dark Girl
* End
* Ku Klux
Ballad of the Landlord
Theme for English B
* As Befits a Man
Harlem [Dream Deferred]
Langston Hughes on Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes, The Harlem Renaissance
Critics on Langston Hughes
Arnold Rampersad, Hughes as an Experimentalist
Rita Dove and Marilyn Nelson, Langston Hughes and Harlem
Darryl Pinckney, Black Identity in Langston Hughes
Peter Townsend, Langston Hughes and Jazz
For Further Reading
Topics for Writing About Emily Dickinson
Topics for Writing About Langston Hughes
29. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: T. S. ELIOT'S "THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK"
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot on Writing
* T. S. Eliot, Poetry and Emotion
* T. S. Eliot, The Objective Correlative
Critics on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
* Denis Donoghue, One of the Irrefutable Poets
* Christopher Ricks, What's in a Name?
* Philip R. Headings, The Pronouns in the Poem: "One," "You," and "I"
* Maud Ellmann, Will There Be Time?
* John Berryman, Prufrock's Dilemma
Topics for Writing
30. POEMS FOR FURTHER READING
Anonymous, Lord Randall
Anonymous, Last Words of the Prophet (Navajo Mountain Chant)
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach
John Ashbery, At North Farm
* Margaret Atwood, Siren Song
W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening
W. H. Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts
Elizabeth Bishop, Filling Station
William Blake, The Tyger
* Gwendolyn Brooks, the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways
Robert Browning, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
Lucille Clifton, Homage to my hips
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan
Billy Collins, Care and Feeding
E. E. Cummings, somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
* Marisa de los Santos, Perfect Dress
John Donne, Death be not proud
John Donne, The Flea
Louise Erdrich, Indian Boarding School: The Runaways
Robert Frost, Birches
Robert Frost, Mending Wall
Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California
Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain
Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays
Seamus Heaney, Digging
George Herbert, Love
Robert Herrick, To the Virgins to Make Much of Time
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall
Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover
A. E. Housman, Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young
Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Robinson Jeffers, To the Stone-cutters
Ben Jonson, On My First Son
* Donald Justice, On the Death of Friends in Childhood
John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
* Ted Kooser, Abandoned Farmhouse
Philip Larkin, Home is so Sad
* Denise Levertov, The Ache of Marriage
Robert Lowell, Skunk Hour
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo
John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent
Marianne Moore, Poetry
Marilyn Nelson, A Strange Beautiful Woman
Howard Nemerov, The War in the Air
* Lorine Niedecker, Poet's Work
Yone Noguchi, A Selection of Hokku
Sharon Olds, The One Girl at the Boys' Party
Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth
Linda Pastan, Ethics
Sylvia Plath, Daddy
Alexander Pope, A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing
Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant's Wife: a Letter
Dudley Randall, A Different Image
Henry Reed, Naming of Parts
Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin
Edwin Arlington Robinson, Miniver Cheevy
Theodore Roethke, Elegy for Jane
William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes
William Shakespeare, That time of year thou mayst in me behold
William Shakespeare, My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun
David R. Slavitt, Titanic
Cathy Song, Stamp Collecting
Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream
* Larissa Szporluk, Vertigo
Sara Teasdale, The Flight
* Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dark house, by which once more I stand
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill
John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player
Derek Walcott, The Virgins
Edmund Waller, Go, Lovely Rose
* Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing
Richard Wilbur, The Writer
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge
James Wright, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio
Mary Sidney Wroth, In This Strange Labyrinth
Sir Thomas Wyatt, They flee from me that sometime did me seke
William Butler Yeats, Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop
William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old
* Bernice Zamora, Penitents
DRAMA
31. READING A PLAY
A Play in Its Elements
Susan Glaspell, Trifles
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Susan Glaspell, Creating Trifles
Writing About Conflict
Conflict Resolution
Checklist: Analyzing Conflict
Writing Assignment on Conflict
More Topics For Writing
32. MODES OF DRAMA: TRAGEDY & COMEDY
Tragedy
* Christopher Marlowe, A Scene from Doctor Faustus (in which Faustus sells his soul to the devil; Act 2, Scene 1)
Comedy
* David Ives, Sure Thing
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
* David Ives, On the One-Act Play
Writing About Comedy
Getting Serious About Comedy
Checklist: Writing About a Comedy
Writing Assignment on Comedy
More Topics For Writing
33. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: SOPHOCLES
The Theater of Sophocles
Staging
The Civic Role of Greek Drama
Aristotle's Concept of Tragedy
The Origins of Oedipus the King
Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald)
Critics on Sophocles
Aristotle, Defining Tragedy
Sigmund Freud, The Oedipus Complex
E. R. Dodds, On Misunderstanding Oedipus
A. E. Haigh, The Irony of Sophocles
* David Wiles, The Chorus as Democrat
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Robert Fitzgerald, Translating Sophocles into English
Writing About Ancient Greek Tragedy
Some Things Change. Some Things Don't.
Checklist: Analyzing Ancient Greek Tragedy
Writing Assignment on Sophocles
More Topics For Writing
34. CRITICAL CASEBOOK: SHAKESPEARE
The Theater of Shakespeare
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
A Note on Othello
William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice
Critics on Shakespeare
Anthony Burgess, An Asian Culture Looks at Shakespeare
W. H. Auden, Iago as a Triumphant Villain
Maud Bodkin, Lucifer on Shakespeare's Othello
Virginia Mason Vaughan, Black and White in Othello
* Claire Asquith, Shakespeare's Language as a Hidden Political Code
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writers on Writing
Ben Jonson, On His Friend And Rival William Shakespeare
Writing About Shakespeare
Breaking the Language Barrier
Checklist: Writing About a Shakespearean Play
Writing Assignment on Tragedy
Student Essay, Othello: Tragedy or Soap Opera?
More Topics For Writing
35. THE MODERN THEATER
Realism and Naturalism
Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House (Translated by James McFarlane)
Writers on Writing
* Henrik Ibsen, Correspondence on the Final Scene of A Doll's House
Tragicomedy and the Absurd
Milcha Sanchez-Scott, The Cuban Swimmer
Writers on Writing
Milcha Sanchez-Scott, Writing The Cuban Swimmer
WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Writing About Dramatic Realism
What's so Realistic About Realism?
Checklist: Writing About a Realist Play
Writing Assignment on Realism
Student Essay, Helmer vs. Helmer
More Topics For Writing
36. PLAYS FOR FURTHER READING
* Rita Dove, The Darker Face of the Earth
Writers on Writing
* Rita Dove, The Inspiration for The Darker Face of the Earth
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Writers on Writing
Arthur Miller, Tragedy and the Common Man
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Writers on Writing
Tennessee Williams, How to Stage The Glass Menagerie
* August Wilson, Fences
Writers on Writing
* August Wilson, A Look into Black America
Writing
37. WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE
Start by Reading Actively
Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay
Planning Your Essay
Prewriting: Discovering Ideas
Brainstorming
Clustering
Listing
Freewriting
Journaling
Outlining
Developing a Literary Argument
Purpose
Audience
Topic
Thesis
Argument
Claims
Persuasion
Evidence
Warrants
Credibility
Organization
Checklist: Developing an Argument
Writing a Rough Draft
Student Writing, Sample Rough Draft
Revising
Checklist: Revision Steps
Some General Advice on Rewriting
Sample Student Essay, Final Draft
Using Critical Sources and Maintaining Academic Integrity
The Form of your Finished Paper
38. WRITING ABOUT A STORY
Start with Active Reading
Thinking About the Text
Preparing to Write: Discovering Ideas
Writing a First Draft
CHECKLIST: WRITING A ROUGH DRAFT
Revising
CHECKLIST: REVISION
What's Your Purpose? Some Common Approaches to Writing About Fiction
Explication
Sample Student Essay (Explication)
Analysis
Sample Student Essay (Analysis)
The Card Report
Sample Student Card Report
Comparison and Contrast
Sample Student Essay (Comparison and Contrast)
Topics for Writing
39. WRITING ABOUT A POEM
Getting Started
Reading Actively
Robert Frost, Design
Thinking About a Poem
Preparing to Write
Writing a First Draft
CHECKLIST: WRITING A ROUGH DRAFT
Revising
CHECKLIST: REVISION
Some Common Approaches to Writing About Poetry
Explication
Sample Student Essay (Explication)
Analysis
Sample Student Essay (Analysis)
Comparison and Contrast
Abbie Huston Evans, Wing-Spread
Sample Student Essay (Comparison and Contrast)
How to Quote a Poem
Topics for Writing
Robert Frost, In White
40. WRITING ABOUT A PLAY
Reading a Play
Some Methods of Writing About Drama
Explication
Analysis
Comparison and Contrast
A Review
Sample Student Drama Review
How to Quote a Play
Topics for Writing
41. WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER
Getting Started
Choosing a Topic
Finding Research Sources
Finding Print Resources
Using Online Databases
Using Visual Images
CHECKLIST: USING VISUAL IMAGES
Finding Reliable Web Sources
CHECKLIST: FINDING SOURCES
Evaluating Sources
Print Resources
Choose Web Sources Carefully
CHECKLIST: EVALUATING SOURCES
Organizing Your Research
Refining Your Thesis
Organizing Your Paper
Writing and Revising
Guarding Academic Integrity
Papers for Sale Are Papers that "F"ail
A Warning Against Internet Plagiarism
Acknowledging Sources
Quoting a Source
Citing Ideas
Documenting Sources Using MLA Style
Concluding Thoughts
Sample Student Research Paper
Reference Guide for Citations
42. WRITING AN ESSAY EXAM
43. CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LITERATURE
Formalist Criticism
Cleanth Brooks, The Formalist Critic
Michael Clark, Light and Darkness in "Sonny's Blues"
Biographical Criticism
Emily Toth, The Source for Alcee Laballiere in "The Storm"
Brett C. Millier, On Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art"
Historical Criticism
Hugh Kenner, Imagism
* Kathryn Lee Seidel, The Economics of "Sweat"
Psychological Criticism
Sigmund Freud, The Nature of Dreams
Harold Bloom, Poetic Influence
Mythological Criticism
C. J. Jung, The Collective Unconscious and Archetypes
Edmond Volpe, Myth in Faulkner's "Barn Burning"
Sociological Criticism
Georg Lukacs, Content Determines Form
Daniel P. Watkins, Money and Labor in "The Rocking-Horse Winner"
Gender Criticism
Elaine Showalter, Toward a Feminist Poetics
* Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Freedom of Emily Dickinson
Reader-Response Criticism
Stanley Fish, An Eskimo "A Rose for Emily"
* Robert Scholes, "How Do We Make a Poem?"
Deconstructionist Criticism
Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author
Geoffrey Hartman, On Wordsworth's "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal"
Cultural Studies
Vincent B. Leitch, Poststructuralist Cultural Critique
Mark Bauerlein, What Is Cultural Studies?