1995 Poem: “The Broken Heart” (John Donne)
Prompt: Read the following poem carefully. Then, in a well-organized essay, analyze how the speaker uses the varied imagery of the poem to reveal his attitude toward the nature of love.

The Broken Heart by John Donne

He is stark mad, whoever says,
    That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
    But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
    Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
    I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
    If once into love’s hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
    To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
    By him, as by chain’d shot, whole ranks do die ;
    He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If ‘twere not so, what did become
    Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
    But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
    More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
    At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
    Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
    Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
    My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
    But after one such love, can love no more.

1996 Poem: “The Author to Her Book” (Anne Bradstreet)
Prompt: Read carefully the following poem by the colonial American poet, Anne Bradstreet.  Then write a well-organized essay in which you discuss how the poem’s controlling metaphor expresses the complex attitude of the speaker.

The Author to Her Book by Anne  Bradstreet

Thou ill-form’d offspring of my feeble brain, 
Who after birth did’st by my side remain, 
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true 
Who thee abroad, expos’d to publick view; 
Made thee in rags, halting to th’ press to trudge, 
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge) 
At thy return my blushing was not small, 
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call, 
I cast thee by as one unfit for light, 
Thy visage was so irksome in my sight; 
Yet being mine own, at length affection would 
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could: 
I wash’d thy face, but more defects I saw, 
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw. 
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run’st more hobbling than is meet; 
In better dress to trim thee was my mind, 
But nought save home-spun cloth, i’ th’ house I find. 
In this array, ‘mongst vulgars mayst thou roam 
In critics hands, beware thou dost not come; 
And take thy way where yet thou art not known, 
If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none: 
And for thy mother, she alas is poor, 
Which caus’d her thus to send thee out of door.

1997 Poem: “The Death of a Toad” (Richard Wilbur)
Prompt: Read the following poem carefully.  Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain how formal elements such as structure, syntax, diction, and imagery reveal the speaker’s response to the death of a toad.

The Death of a Toad by Richard Wilbur

            A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped of a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
   To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him
   Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
            Of the ashen heartshaped leaves, in a dim,
               Low, and a final glade.

            The rare original heartsblood goes,
Spends on the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
   In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
   As still as if he would return to stone,
            And soundlessly attending, dies
               Toward some deep monotone,

            Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia’s emperies.
   Day dwindles, drowning, and at length is gone
   In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
            To watch, across the castrate lawn,
               The haggard daylight steer.

1998 Poem: “It’s a Woman’s World” (Eavan Boland)
Prompt: The following poem was written by a contemporary Irish woman, Eavan Boland.  Read the poem carefully and then write an essay in which you analyze how the poem reveals the speaker’s complex conception of a “woman’s world.”

It’s a Woman’s World by Eavan Boland

we were never
on the scene of the crime.

1999 Poem: “Blackberry-Picking” (Seamus Heaney)
Prompt: Read the following poem carefully, paying particular attention to the physical intensity of the language. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain how the poet conveys not just a literal description of picking blackberries but a deeper understanding of the whole experience. You may wish to include analysis of such elements as diction, imagery, metaphor, rhyme, rhythm, and form.
Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun

For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

At first, just one, a glossy purple clot

Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.

You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet

Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it

Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for

Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger

Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots

Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.

Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills

We trekked and picked until the cans were full

Until the tinkling bottom had been covered

With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned

Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered

With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.

But when the bath was filled we found a fur,

A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.

The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush

The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.

I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.

Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.

2000 Poems: Siren passage from the Odyssey (Homer) / “Siren Song” (Margaret Atwood)
Prompt:  The story of Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens and their enchanting but deadly song appears in Greek epic poetry in Homer’s Odyssey.  An English translation of the episode is reprinted in the left column below.  Margaret Atwood’s poem in the right column is a modern commentary on the classical story.  Read both texts carefully.  Then write an essay in which you compare the portrayals of the Sirens.  Your analysis should include discussion of tone, point of view, and whatever poetic devices (diction, imagery, etc.) seem most appropriate.

. . . our trim ship was speeding toward
the Sirens’ island, driven by the brisk wind.
. . .
Now with a sharp sword I sliced an ample wheel of beeswax
down into pieces, kneaded them in my two strong hands
and the wax soon grew soft, worked by my strength
and Helios’ burning rays, the sun at high noon,
and I stopped the ears of my comrades one by one.
They bound me hand and foot in the tight ship –
erect at the mast-block, lashed by ropes to the mast –
and rowed and churned the whitecaps stroke on stroke.
We were just offshore as far as a man’s shout can carry,
scudding close, when the Sirens sensed at once a ship
was racing past and burst into their high, thrilling song:
“Come closer, famous Odysseus – Achaea’s pride and glory –
moor your ship on our coast so you can hear our song!
Never has a sailor passed our shores in his black craft
until he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips,
and once he hears to his heart’s content sails on, a wiser man.”
. . .
   So they sent their ravishing voices out across the air
and the heart inside me throbbed to listen longer.
I signaled the crew with frowns to set me free –
they flung themselves at the oars and rowed on harder.
Perimedes and Eurylochus springing up at once
to bind me faster with rope on chafing rope.
But once we’d left the Sirens fading in our wake,
once we could hear their song no more, their urgent call –
My steadfast crew was quick to removed the wax I’d used
to seal their ears and loosed the bonds that lashed me.

Siren Song by Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

2001 Poems: “London, 1802” (William Wordsworth) / “Douglass” (Paul Laurence Dunbar)
Prompt:  In each of the following poems, the speaker responds to the conditions of a particular place and time – England in 1802 in the first poem, the United States about 100 years later in the second.  Read each poem carefully.  Then write an essay in which you compare and contrast the two poems and analyze the relationship between them.

London, 1802 by William Wordsworth

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
5          Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
10        Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet the heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

Douglass by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Ah, Douglass, we have fall’n on evil days,
  Such days as thou, not even thou didst know,
  When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago
Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways,
5          And all the country heard thee with amaze.
  Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow,
  The awful tide that battled to and fro;
We ride amid a tempest of dispraise.

Now, when the waves of swift dissension swarm,
10          And Honor, the strong pilot, lieth stark,
Oh, for thy voice high-sounding o’er the storm,
  For thy strong arm to guide the shivering bark,
The blast-defying power of thy form,
  To give us comfort through the lonely dark.

2002 Poem: “The Convergence of the Twain” (Thomas Hardy)
Prompt:  Read the following poem carefully.  Then, taking into consideration the title of the poem, analyze how the poetic devices convey the speaker’s attitude toward the sinking of the ship.

The Convergence of the Twain by Thomas Hardy

(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)

          I
     In a solitude of the sea
     Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

          II

     Steel chambers, late the pyres
     Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

          III

     Over the mirrors meant
     To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

          IV

     Jewels in joy designed
     To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

          V

     Dim moon-eyed fishes near
     Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”. . .

          VI

     Well: while was fashioning
     This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

          VII

     Prepared a sinister mate
     For her—so gaily great—
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

          VIII

     And as the smart ship grew
     In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

          IX

     Alien they seemed to be:
     No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.

          X

     Or sign that they were bent
     By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

          XI

     Till the Spinner of the Years
     Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

2002B Poem: “If I Could Tell You” (W. H. Auden)
Prompt: The following poem is a villanelle, a form having strict rules of rhyme, meter, and repetition. Read the poem carefully. Then write a well-organized essay in which you analyze how the formal elements of the poem contribute to its meaning.

If I Could Tell You by W.H. Auden

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.