• Value: 10%
• Length: 10 x 250-500 words
• Due Dates: Every Monday in the term

The first—and ongoing—assignment for the course is a series of 10 short response papers that you will submit at the beginning of each Monday class. Together these will comprise a journal of your readings of Romantic poetry.

What you write in these response papers is more or less up to you. Here, though, are some general guidelines for how to compose these responses and what my expectations are for them:

• write about one poem only – a short poem from a collection, a stand-alone lyric, a section of a longer poem
• Avoid commenting either on how the poem (or section) makes you feel or whether you think it is “really good” or “awesome”
• Try to focus on formal features and devices: metaphor, imagery, sound, diction, rhythm, rhetoric, logic, structure, genre
• consider how these formal elements address issues relevant to the course and to our ongoing discussions of the literature and politics of the Romantic era
• write in complete sentences and paragraphs – no point form – and use MLA format

In other words, your reading journal should comprise a series of close readings of some of the poems we are working on this class.

Each reading-response papers will be submitted at the beginning of Monday classes. I will read them, but you will not receive formal grades. Instead, I will assess the responses using a check/check-plus/check-minus system: a check means the reading is adequately detailed and moderately interesting; a check-plus means the reading is relevant, nuanced, and compelling, and a check-minus means you’ve just gone through the motions and submitted the first things that came into your head. In a few cases, I will provide written comments on either the content of your response or on the quality of your writing. The goal here is to help you to focus on difficulties or gaps in your thinking that might need to be addressed. In cases where the readings are very compelling, I might suggest ways that they can be expanded to form the basis for a research paper.

The purpose of this assignment is to ensure that you are engaging with the material on the course regularly and closely. Inevitably, the responses will be shaped by class discussion; you may feel the need to respond to conversations we have in class through the reading journal. That is fine. However, you should always try to orient your comments around close readings of the poetry.

Please note that since class consists of 12 weeks, and this assignment asks that you submit 10 responses, everyone in the class will have 2 weeks in which they do not have to submit a response.