1. Poetry Project – with table group
Choose an award winning poet (from list, or other)
Research some relevant background info on poet
Choose two poems by poet to analyze
Analyze poems, annotating for word choice, literary devices, figurative language, tone and mood, form and sound, theme, etc
Create poster

2. Poetry Project – with table group
Final poster should include:
Poet’s name and relevant background info (words and images!)
Copy of each poem (or excerpt, if poem is very long)
Poems should be annotated to show at least three major creative and structural choices that the poet made to emphasize something or make a larger point
At least three pieces of imagery (either important to the poem’s message or just a piece of imagery that stands out to you) should be illustrated on the poster
Will be shown in gallery walk, so viewers should be able to understand the meaning and message of the poem based on your annotations and illustrations.

3. Sharon Olds
$100,000 Wallace Stevens Award for “outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.”
Pulitzer Prize in 2013
“ intensely personal, emotionally scathing poetry which graphically depicts family life as well as global political events” (Poetry Foundation)
“May 1968”
“1954”
Rite of Passage

4. Gwendolyn Brooks Pulitzer Prize 1950 United States Poet Laureate 1985
Medal f Distinguished Contribution to American Letters 1994
“she combined a strong commitment to racial identity and equality with a mastery of poetic techniques” (Poetry Foundation)
“The Bean Eaters”
“We Real Cool”
“To Be in Love”

5. Khaled Mattawa Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts
American Academy of Poets award
“is politically astute, formally daring, grips the reader with an intelligence that spotlights, too, its sensual and emotional (and historical) accuracy.” –Marilyn Hacker, Poets.org
“Now That We Have Tasted Hope”
“Ali Ali!”
“Taproot and Cradle”

6. Edna St. Vincent Millay Robert Frost Medal 1943
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1923
Robert Frost Medal 1943
 ”celebrates the rapture of beauty and laments its inevitable passing. ”
“The Bean-Stalk”
“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”
“presenting the woman as player in the love game no less than the man and frankly accepting biological impulses in love affairs.”
“Four Sonnets”

7. William Carlos Williams
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1963
United States Poet Laureate 1952
National Book Award for Poetyr 1950
Principal poets for Imagist Movement (look it up)
“subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.” (poets.org)
“Spring Storm”
“Gulls”
“To a Poor Old Woman”

8. Anne Sexton Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1967
Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts 1969
“highly personal, confessional verse”
“long battle against depression and mania”
“The Double Image” (long, you can use an excerpt)
“Her Kind”
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”

9. Yusef Komunyakaa Pulitzer prize for Poetry 1994
Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award 1994
“fuses jazz rhythms and syncopation with hip colloquialism and the unique, arresting poetic imagery that has since become his trademark. It also outlines an abiding desire in his work to articulate cultural truths that remain unspoken in daily discourse,” (Wikipedia)
“Blues Chant Hodoo Reviial”
“Instructions for Building Straw Huts”
“Facing It”

10. Billy Collins United States Poet Laureate 2000
Guggenheim Fellowship 1993
“We seem to always know where we are in a Billy Collins poem, but not necessarily where he is going. I love to arrive with him at his arrivals. He doesn’t hide things from us, as I think lesser poets do. He allows us to overhear, clearly, what he himself has discovered.” (Stephan Dunn)
“Introduction to Poetry”
“Fishing on the Susquehanna in July”
“Snow Day”

11. Theodore Roethke Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1954
National Book Award for Poetry 1965, 1959
“I don't see anyone else that has the kind of deep, gut vitality that Roethke's got.” – James Dickey
“My Papa’s Waltz”
“Elegy for Jane”

12. Juan Felipe Herrera Current United States Poet Laureate
Guggenheim Fellowship 2010
“Blood on the Wheel”
“Half-Mexican”
“Five Directions to my House”