Formatting specifics:
– 5–7 pages, double-spaced, 1-inch margins (minimum 5 full pages)
o no cover pages please
– 12 pt. Garamond or Times New Roman font
– * Must include an interesting title
– You must use in-text MLA citation and provide a Works Cited page (which does not count toward final page count)
– You must use a minimum of 3 citations from the poem in your analysis, and a minimum of 4 additional citations from outside research.

PROMPT: Close Reading / Analytical Essay
The increased politicization of poetry marked a way that modernist poets broke tradition of their predecessors, and many of them wrote about the politics that affected them personally and as artists. Research the political situation(s) that inspired Pablo Neruda’s poem “I’m Explaining A Few Things” & Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica. View the painting, and read http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/main_guerfrm.html) .
The first part of your essay should discuss the political & historical contexts of each the poem and the painting. Because you will be doing research, you will need to cite your sources. During this first part of your essay, you should use a minimum of 4 examples from Neruda’s poem to demonstrate where and how Neruda is responding to/writing about the political/historical situation.
The second part of your essay should be dominantly analytical in your close reading of the poem (and painting). Discuss the surrealistic quality of Picasso’s and Neruda’s images: how do Neruda’s tone, varying length of stanzas, and half lines parallel Picasso’s painting?

EVALUATION:
I will evaluate your essay on the depth with which you analyze the following multi-part questions, as well as on the criteria immediately listed below:
• your essay should contain an introductory paragraph which demonstrates your understanding of modernist poetry (what it was, the values, ideals, and beliefs it demonstrated or espoused, in your own words) and should contain a clear thesis which outlines what your essay will discuss, analyze, and explore.
• your essay will be analytical in nature in your exploration of analyzing Neruda & Picasso, in both their respective historical and political contexts and in your analyzing their works alongside one another.
• your essay should be amply supported by textual examples (minimum of 4 examples from the poem), with in-text MLA citation.
• your essay should demonstrate sufficient research of each of the political histories associated with the poem and the painting, and the understanding of those contexts will be conveyed dominantly in your own words, rather than quoted from an outside source.
• your essay should be proofread and should be free of grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors.