for maggies 

Choose two poems and two songs that you would like to discuss as literary texts and construct a paper that analyzes how they each represent the world through figurative language (metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, metonymy, etc.).

Using (at least) one direct quote as evidence from each of the poems and lyrics of your chosen songs (for a minimum of four direct quotes in total), write a paper that illustrates the connections that can be established between each and every poem and song through their respective use of figurative language that all represent some similar concept or experience (love, death, pain, power, sex, anger, war, etc.). Specifically, your paper needs to

1) identify one important example of figurative language in each work
2) explain what it means/how it means it
3) argue which of the four is the most potent example of poetic language

Again, there is a great deal of freedom within these parameters. However, the most important thing to understand as you work on in the paper is the fact that you need to choose poems and songs that all address the same concept or experience. This does not mean, of course, that the poems and songs must all portray this concept or experience in the same way; in fact, I fully expect that you will show how each deals with this concept or experience differently. Of course, we will discuss how to go about this in class multiple times.

In any case, the specifics for how you might achieve the highest amount of skills development—and receive the highest grade possible—include:

• four direct quotes, each between 1 and 6 lines long (any longer and your paper would have to be 10 pages long to justify the use of such long quotes)
• four in-text citations and four entries in the Works Cited page
• a detailed explanation regarding not only what each instance of figurative language means, but how it means it
• an original, multi-paragraph response, organized in the fundamental intro-body-conclusion academic shape (you MUST do your own work . . . plagiarism will result in a zero)
• approx. 1000 words (this is a target range, NOT an absolute number that MUST be reached . . . quality is much more important than mere quantity)