Poetry Essays: Sample paragraphs

Each body paragraph should have:

a) topic sentence

b) intro to the quotation

c) quotation

d) reflection or analysis of the quotation (3 to 4 sentences)

“Mending Wall”

The seemingly ambiguous beginning of the poem actually conveys Frost’s ideas about the inherent problem with walls, with both physical and mental walls. Although the first line, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” leads into a discussion of how nature literally breaks down walls, he repeats the line again near the end of the poem as the speaker criticizes his neighbor for blindly following his father’s tradition of building fences to keep friendly relations. Through the repetition of this line, Frost attempts to break down the power of walls, of mental walls. He emphasizes the fact that although people are constantly building walls, there is something hidden within us or within nature that steers us in the right direction. Nature knows better than we do; nature understands that walls, by definition, wall things in and wall things out and prevent us from understanding each other, our environment, and ourselves. By perceiving the impact of walls, we can move beyond them.

“One Art”

Initially, “One Art” reads like a lighthearted, humorous poem about carelessness. The speaker continually repeats, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” after describing the loss of various objects like door keys, time, watches, etc. As the objects lost gain in importance, like the loss of cities and continents, the speaker still states that losing things is a skill that anyone can master. In the last stanza, however, Bishop reveals the true meaning of the poem . . .