“The Broken Heart” by John Donne Rehash
Organization: Higher scoring essays addressed the whole poem from start to finish!
· Organize by stanza (if you have them); lots of people jumped into the middle of the poem or grabbed a word from here and there; very hard to follow. STOP DOING THIS!
· If you don’t have stanzas, organize by tone shifts or idea shifts, but start from the top and work your way down. Lower scoring essays were all over the place in organization and ignored or missed important ideas or misread the poem!
· Read poetry lines to the end of the sentence (watch for punctuation that indicates complete sentences) NOT the end of the line…many misread the poem because you only looked at one line and NOT the whole sentence
· I saw good use of topic sentences that surrounded ideas that could be proven! Good!
· Thesis statements are getting better; however, some of you are still pretty vague and not too specific
Techniques: Use of the literary language (What is it? What is it doing?)
· Get yourself a tone word worksheet from the Internet. I don’t think this poem was romantic, hopeful, whimsical, optimistic or anything positive at all (and any one that argued this didn’t do a good job of it…maybe one, but that person rocked the rest of their essay so I forgave whimsical).
· The prompt asked you to analyze HOW the speaker uses VARIED IMAGERY to reveal his attitude toward the nature of love. “…the detailed imagery makes a romantic tone.” HOW does the imagery do this. Lots of statements were made like this.
· Imagery is created through use of personification, metaphor, hyperbole, simile…all these help create the tone of the poem. Many didn’t talk about technique, and as a result, great ideas were lost because you were NOT specific and your writing was vague and didn’t answer the prompt.
· Higher scoring essays hit the techniques right on and made it a natural part of their writing.
· Love is PERSONIFIED as a predator and a destroyer of the heart. The heart is PERSONIFIED as fragile and powerless against LOVE. His lover is NOT responsible for breaking his heart LOVE is. LOVE has shattered his heart; it can only work a little and do the basics. Many missed these big ideas; higher scoring essays nailed it!
So What?: How and why do these techniques convey the speakers attitude about love (Why is it important?)
· You have to be specific about his attitude about love. I don’t know what a “high attitude” is. He is in “awe” of love. What do you mean? Be specific. PRECISION OF LANGUAGE IS GOING TO GET YOU THE HIGHER SCORES!
· Higher scoring essays were able to give some good insights about love in their conclusions.
Other random things:
· Use “quotation marks” where using poem titles
· Refer to full author’s name in introduction; only last name after (you are not on a first name basis with the author)
· Write so I can read it. If I can’t read it, I can’t give you a good grade.
· Don’t use second person (you) or first person (me).
· Pay attention to title. It might give you some insight into poem.
· Though you are graded on what you do well and what you have, essays that don’t get completed won’t be able to get into the higher scoring range. How can you get more written during the time period given? I saw some good writing on essays that didn’t get finished.
· Vary your sentences: Avoid saying “This shows” “This emphasizes” “This means”
· Don’t paraphrase the lines in your analysis unless you are going to EXPLAIN the connection between the evidence and the so what. Many just gave the paraphrase: this line means that Love is a tyrant pike and our hearts the fry; okay? So what? What does this mean towards the speaker’s attitude towards love?