Prompt for Essay 3: 

• For this paper, you will select two of the assigned poems and compare and contrast (C/C)* them in a 4-page MLA styled paper**
• Focus your analysis on the figure of speech and/or imagery) and how these contribute to the poem’s overall meaning. 
• Be sure to cite any outside sources you consult.  
• For citing lines of verse in proper MLA style, please see below.

*

** (MLA-styled in-text citations and Works Cited page required–see below for details)

_________________________________________________________________________________

How to Cite a Poem in MLA Style

Cite line numbers.   (No line numbers? If only one page, don’t cite any number.  If more than one page, cite page numbers.)

3 Lines or Fewer

Incorporate the quotation into the body of your text.

• • • Use quotation marks
    • Use slashes (/) to show line breaks and keep all punctuation as it appears in the poem
    • If the author’s name is elsewhere in your paper, do not include it. Instead, include the first significant word of the poem’s title.
    • If the title of the poem is in the sentences immediately before the quotation, cite the line number only.

Ex. In "Hands," Jeffers humanizes prehistoric cave drawings by giving the drawers a voice: "Look: we also were human; we had hands, not paws" (line 10)

Ex. Eliot immediately engages the reader with his use of the second person in the opening lines: "Let us go then, you and I / When the evening is spread out against the sky" ("Prufrock" 1-2).

Four or More Lines

Start the quotation on a new line.

• • • Do not use quotation marks unless they are used in the poem
    • Indent each line 1 inch from the left margin and double-space
    • Use slashes (/) to show line breaks and keep all punctuation as it appears in the poem

Ex. Yeats, an Irish nationalist himself, knew several of the Easter Monday rebels personally, and he mentions them by name in his poem. He even notes his former nemesis, Major John MacBride, who was briefly married to Yeats’s love, Maude Gonne. Though he acknowledges MacBride’s heroism, he does so begrudgingly:

A drunken, vainglorious lout

He had done most bitter wrong

To some who are near my heart

Yet I number him in the song; ("Easter" 31-34)

Please Note:  Only include block quotations if the entirety of the quotation is essential to your argument and you discuss the block in detail in your paper.