Joseph A. answered • 12/12/19
Wise old Democratic Socialist English Professor
So I'm not supposed to produce an answer you could just copy and paste in as if it were your own. Handsome not exactly sure what your question is about the assignment. and it does seem like a very straightforward assignment that spells out exactly what you need to do to answer it.
But perhaps byou're having trouble on the most basic question, "What does the poem mean?" Consider the meaning always occurs in context. a simpler way of saying what I just said is to ask who is speaking and to whom and with what attitude or tone of voice. Often the subtleties of a poem are found in attitude or tone of voice. In this case I can share with you the first point at which I pick up on their speakers attitude is in the title. The month of May--what does it make us think of? You know the old cliche about April showers bringing May flowers. It ought to be a happy time. but what kind of flowers are blooming for the speaker?
And once you have begun to figure out your theory about what the poem means could you can start answering some of the other specific requirements in the questions that are posed. Of course to ask what imagery supports your theory means you have to know what the word imagery refers to. What is imagery? I think you're supposed to already know and that this assignment is in part a test to make sure that you do. And the same thing goes for figures of speech. You're supposed to know what a figure of speech is so they can pick out one that fits your theory about what poem means. And well I'm not exactly sure what the person who wrote the question means by sound effect since I would normally associate the term sound effect with the artificial methods that are used to produce sounds for movies and their soundtracks, I expect that your instructor has explained to you what he or she meant by that term and that you're supposed to already understand it so that you can then pick out an instance of 1 this fits well with your theory about what the poem means.
If you'vemade notes on all the things I've just described you got the raw materials for a paragraph. I think you're supposed to already know what a topic sentence is also and that you're being tested on your knowledge of what a topic sentence is. so you need to apply what you know about what topic sentences are and how they work to design one fitted to support your theory of what the poem means and how these various other points you've had to identify such as imagery and sound effect and so on, all fit together as a package that makes your theory pretty convincing.
II hope you find my answer to your question helpful. I know you may not think it's very helpful since I didn't provide you with the answer you should write for yourself. But I did help you analyze the problem pretty thoroughly. And once you got the problem analyzed you can start to work on solving it yourself. And isn't teaching people how to solve problems for themselves really what teaching is all about a lot of the time?
Joseph A.
I made my answer from my phone by dictation, and I am positively embarrassed by some of the things the transcription program did to what I said! Also, here is more evidence for the value of careful editing: I ignored one of my own preferred tricks for careful editing. I usually go over what I have written several times once it is completely finished, including at least one pass in which I read the text sentence by sentence, but in reverse order. That is, I read the last sentence, then I read the second to last sentence, then the third. I am sure I'd have caught every single one of those errors, had I taken time to use my normal bag of editing tricks, instead of just spinning out my thoughts more or less as they came to me. Another lesson learned again. I often find l learn the lessons I most need to know well by learning them over and over again, finding out that I need to do so every time I forget to put one into practice because I let myself get in too much of a hurry.12/12/19