Your Name
Prof’s Name
Class
Date
Two Part Title
(For example: Neither Shy Nor Slow: A Lesson on Nature’s Wisdom in Ogden Nash’s “The Turtle”)
INTRODUCTION Write a paragraph giving the title of the poem you are writing about, the year it was published, and the name of the poet who wrote it. Briefly explain the topic of the poem and the elements you are analyzing: the central image you see in your mind’s eye when you read the poem and the sounds you hear in its wording when you read it aloud. End this paragraph with a two-part thesis statement: (a) Explain what the poem means to you according to your interpretation. (b) Explain with what specific audience and for what appropriate life occasion you would want to share this poem and its message: who would especially appreciate its significance and why?
POET’S HEADSHOT Insert an image of the poet after the introduction and before the verse-to-prose translation and add a caption. Crop the dimensions of the photo to an appropriate size so it enhances your writing instead of distracting the reader’s attention away from it. Add a caption.
The poet Ogden Nash
VERSE-TO-PROSE TRANSLATION create a Table in Microsoft Word with two columns. Copy and Paste the original poem into the column on the left and add your line-by-line verse-to-prose translation in the column on the right. Make the font two sizes smaller than in the rest of your essay as shown below:
Verse uses precise diction (word choice) creative syntax (word order), and sensory language (words that create images and sounds, etc.), as well as unique structures, rhythm (and rhyme, sometimes). Verse is written in lines and stanzas, and it can sound like song lyrics, sometimes. Free verse follows no set structure, while some poems like sonnets and ballads follow strict structures. Prose uses everyday language with common vocabulary and simple sentence structures. We speak and read and write mostly in prose in everyday life. Prose is written in sentences and paragraphs, and it can sound like the dialogue of people speaking or like a speech delivered to an audience. Prose is the language of all kinds of written texts, including the essays you write for your college courses, like this one.
Original poem written in verse:
“The Turtle” by Ogden Nash
The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile Line-by-line verse-to-prose translation:
A turtle has a shell
and this hard shell hides its reproductive organs.
I think the turtle is a fascinating creature
Despite not showing its reproductive organs hidden by its shell
The turtle is still able to reproduce easily and prolifically
BODY PARAGRAPHS as always, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence, use a quote from the text you are working with to support your ideas and explanations in the paragraph, and end the paragraph with your own words.
SUMMARY Write a one paragraph summary of the poem in your own words. Identify the narrative voice in the poem, if possible (who is speaking), and in your own words, try to explain the story found in the poem. Even though it’s not presented as a traditional story would be told (with a plot, setting, characters, etc.) and even with its use of verse and poetic devices (rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, etc.), each poem presents a story of sorts—what story does your poem recount to readers? Quote a passage from the poem to support your explanation.
SIGHT Write a one paragraph description of a central image in the poem (there may be more than one image in a poem, but you should choose the most important one for your reading.) Quote a passage from the poem that refers to this image and explain what these lines say about the visual that appears in your mind’s eye when you read the poem. What does this image mean as a part of this poem’s meaning as a whole? Why should readers pay attention to this image in the poem? What can this poetic word-picture tell them that ordinary prose cannot say as well?
IMAGE Insert an appropriate image from the Web that reflects the image created by the words in the poem. Crop the dimensions of the photo to an appropriate size so it enhances your writing instead of distracting the reader’s attention away from it. Add a caption.
Baby turtle riding on mom’s shell
SOUND Write a one paragraph explanation of words and lines in the poem that stand out to you as especially effective and memorable in poetic verse instead of ordinary, everyday prose (for example Nash’s “ ‘twixt plated decks” instead of “between the top and bottom of the shell”). Indicate if there is any alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words, like the “C” in Capital Community College) or assonance (repetition of vowel sounds in the middle of words, like the “O” in Holy Moly!) or onomatopoeia (words that sound like they mean, such as buzz, sizzle, cuckoo). What about rhythm and rhyme? Count syllables in Nash’s poem to find each of the first two lines has 8 beats, and the last two have 9. Deck rhymes with sex, and turtle rhymes with fertile. Nash’s wordplay sounds as humorous as the poem’s overall message. What effect do the sounds in your poem have on its overall message? Quote a passage from the poem to support your explanation.
EMOTIONAL RESONANCE Write a one paragraph explanation of the emotional resonance created by this poem. What are the feelings that come up when someone reads it? What does experiencing these emotions do for its readers? By this time, you should be thinking abstractly as opposed to concretely. Words, images, and sounds described in the paragraphs above are concrete, so you can read, see, hear and understand them much more easily than feelings, which are abstract and need to be felt and lived to be experienced. What does your poem make you feel and how does that feeling help you understand the poem more deeply? Quote a passage from the poem to support your explanation.
CONCLUSION Write a one paragraph conclusion for your imagined readers explaining to them your interpretation of the poem’s significance, and how they can discover it’s meaning if they, too, pay attention to the poem’s story, its images, its words and their sounds, and the feelings that will arise in them when they read it. Name the specific audience who would appreciate this poem at an appropriate occasion in life. (Maybe Nash’s poem about the fertile turtle would be perfect for students taking a Biology class so they can use the poem to marvel at these amazing creatures and wonder at their own human nature in making such an observations of wildlife.)
Works Cited
Use www.zbib.org to create a Works Cited page for all your sources, including the poem itself, both images, and any outside sources you may have consulted in researching the poem or poet or subject.
