Goals: The purpose of this final assignment is to provide you with the opportunity to further explore the themes we’ve been focusing on in class this semester in a more creative way. 

Your Task: This assignment asks you to use creativity, critical thinking, and careful analysis to reveal what you’ve learned about the relationship between humans and dogs by writing an imitation poem and reflecting on that process.

Your imitation poem—inspired by a line (or lines) of one of the poems we read for class—should be about a dog (real or imagined). The theme/message/meaning of this poem should represent how your understanding of the relationship between humans and dogs has grown this semester. You should choose one of the following imitation forms:

Option #1: As Mary Oliver has done in “For I Will Consider My Dog Percy,” you should incorporate a line from one of the poems we’ve read into your poem and use this as a refrain. (This means that the line would be repeated at regular intervals throughout your poem.) Your poem should draw inspiration from the poem you’re imitating, but the rest of the poem should be your own original work.

Option #2: You should compose a Golden Shovel. Here’s how this imitation form works: The last words of each line in a Golden Shovel poem are, in order, words from a line (or lines) taken from another poem. You take a line (or a couple of lines)—probably one(s) that you like a lot or find striking—from one of the poems we’ve read, and those words become the end of each of the lines of your poem.

Note: No matter which option you choose, you must identify the author and title of poem you’re imitating and use italics to clearly indicate where you are borrowing lines from the original author’s work. (Refer to this sample paper  Download sample paperas an example of how to do this.)

Your reflection should be included in the same document as your poem, and it should consist of four paragraphs (outlined below). Be specific, thorough, and thoughtful in your responses. Assume your audience for this assignment is your classmates. This type of reflective writing is usually informal, so use of first person and contractions is expected.

Paragraph #1: Examine the inspiration for your poem. Which imitation option did you choose and why? Why were you draw to this poet, poem, and line(s)? What was your inspiration for this poem? What’s the relationship between your subject and the original poem?

Paragraph #2: Describe your writing process. What parts of writing the poem did you struggle with? What parts came more easily? Why? What choices did you make about the sound and rhythm of the poem? What choices did you make about certain lines, wording, use of figurative language, etc.? What choices did you make about punctuation, line breaks, structure, etc.? Why?

Paragraph #3: Explore the deeper meaning of your poem. Explain how the theme/message/meaning of this poem represents how your understanding of the relationship between humans and dogs has grown this semester.

Paragraph #4: Draw connections between your poem and other texts we’ve read. How does the deeper meaning or message of your poem relate to the ideas of any of the authors we’ve read this semester (Laura Hobgood-Oster, Caroline Knapp, Neil Abramson, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Alicia Ostriker, and/or Lawrence Ferlinghetti)?