Any topic related to: Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Stevens, or Eliot

My poetry professor didn't give us a specific essay topic to write about. He instead encouraged us to form our own essay topics. Unfortunately, I don't even know where to begin since I have troubles with poetry to begin with.

Could anyone give me an essay topic to write on? It has to be something I can talk about for about 4-6 pages and it should have something to do with any of the following poets: Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Frost, Stevens, or Eliot.

Please help me out.

Hi, SB!

I have one word...google.

What you need is info, and the info is right at your fingertips. Do I sound like a commercial? OK, it gets worse. Wikipedia, though the absolute worst site to use for references, has a lot of info on any of your authors. The main thing to do is to scroll down to the "references" section and glean primary source links. You gotta do the research for a six page paper - no getting around it, but start with the work that others have already done to make your life easier.
Like I said, do not use the wiki article as truth! Research the references and discern whether they are credible sources or not...it is just a place to start in a pinch.
Good luck and blue skies!
Jeannie

Great avice from Jeanie, that is what I was going to say!

All those poets are so DIFFERENT! How can we compare them? It's better to read some of their work. No, on second thought, check out Eliot!!

You can read articles about his poems. Google a title and put the word analysis in your search.

poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/18

Jeannie, you have been giving some great advice. I always smile when I see you have responded to a post.

All of those poets are very different. You could do a compare/contrast paper, but that might be a little more complex than you could handle given the page limit. You could limit the scope by comparing and contrasting how someone like Frost, a poet laureate and winner of four Pulitzer Prizes obviously wrote for publication and someone like Dickinson, with most of her works not being discovered until after her death, and how that impacted their writing. Even the idea of editing comes into play with this example. I doubt if anyone changed a line of Frost's, but Dickinson's early publications were edited to the point that the changes obliterated the original. Yeats was a Nobel Prize winner and an Irish Senator. How did his fame affect his writing? Eliot was another Nobel winner and from a wealthy family.

You could take one theme ... nature, personification, cadence, romantic love, family ties, religion, war, death .. . and discuss how different poets have approached the subject. I will use Frost and Dickinson again because those are the two that I know best. Using Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" and Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" to examine the poets' treatment of death would work as a paper.

You could take one of the poets and examine their use of language. Robert Frost, for example, had very simple poems on the surface with deeper meaning hidden within the lines. Yeats used a lot of symbolism and seemed to enjoy shrouding his meaning in florid language.

Poetry and politics ... Whitman used his writing to advance a political agenda as did Eliot. Yeats used his Nobel Prize to advance awareness of Ireland's plight, and even Frost was known to make a political statement.

Or the sex lives of the poets if you dare. They are all over the spectrum.

Or how their life situations affected their writing, how education played into their poetry, how each of them broke the rules in his or her own way, the success--and lack of success--each had in his or her life time.

Picking a topic will be tough. What is it that fascinates you about these poets and their work? What would you like to learn more about?