Backpack Literature Book

1. READING A STORY

Fable, Parable, and Tales

W. Somerset Maugham, The Appointment in Samarra

Aesop, The North Wind and the Sun

Bidpai, The Camel and His Friends

Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Godfather Death

The Short Story

John Updike, A & P

Writing Effectively

Writing About Plot

Paying Attention to Plot

Checklist: Analyzing Plot

Writing Assignment on Plot

More Topics For Writing

2. POINT OF VIEW

William Faulkner, A Rose for Emily

Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

Writing Effectively

Writing About Point of View

How Point of View Shapes a Story

Checklist: Understanding Point of View

Writing Assignment on Point of View

More Topics for Writing

3. CHARACTER

Katherine Mansfield, Miss Brill

Raymond Carver, Cathedral

Alice Walker, Everyday Use

Writing Effectively

Writing About Character

How Character Creates Action

Checklist: Writing About Character

Writing Assignment on Character

More Topics For Writing

4. SETTING

Kate Chopin, The Storm

T. Coraghessan Boyle, Greasy Lake

Amy Tan, A Pair of Tickets

Writing Effectively

Writing About Setting

The Importance of Setting

Checklist: Analyzing Setting

Writing Assignment on Setting

More Topics For Writing

5. TONE AND STYLE

Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

William Faulkner, Barn Burning

Irony

O. Henry, Gift of the Magi

Ha Jin, Saboteur

Writing Effectively

Writing About Tone and Style

Be Style Conscious

Checklist: Thinking about Style and Tone

Writing Assignment on Tone and Style

More Topics For Writing

6. THEME

Chinua Achebe, Dead Men’s Path

Luke 15: 11-32, The Parable of the Prodigal Son

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Harrison Bergeron

Writing Effectively

Writing About Theme

Stating the Theme

Checklist: Determining a Story’s Theme

Writing Assignment on Theme

More Topics For Writing

7. SYMBOL

John Steinbeck, The Chrysanthemums

Shirley Jackson, The Lottery

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper

Writing Effectively

Writing About Symbols

Recognizing Symbols

Checklist: Thinking about Symbols

Writing Assignment on Symbols

More Topics For Writing

8. STORIES FOR FURTHER READING

Margaret Atwood, Happy Endings

Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Sandra Cisneros, House on Mango Street

Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

Zora Neale Hurston, Sweat

James Joyce, Araby

Franz Kafka, Before the Law

Jamaica Kincaid, Girl

Joyce Carol Oates, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Octavio Paz, My Life with the Wave

Eudora Welty, The Worn Path

Poetry

9. READING A POEM

William Butler Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree

Lyric Poetry

D. H. Lawrence, Piano

Adrienne Rich, Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

Narrative Poetry

Anonymous, Sir Patrick Spence

Robert Frost, “Out, Out–”

Dramatic Poetry

Robert Browning, My Last Duchess

Writing Effectively

Writing a Paraphrase

Can a Poem be Paraphrased?

William Stafford, Ask Me

William Stafford, A Paraphrase of "Ask Me"

Checklist: Paraphrasing a Poem

Writing Assignment on Paraphrase

More Topics for Writing

10. LISTENING TO A VOICE

Tone

Theodore Roethke, My Papa’s Waltz

Countee Cullen, For a Lady I Know

Anne Bradstreet, The Author to Her Book

Walt Whitman, To a Locomotive in Winter

Emily Dickinson, I like to see it lap the Miles

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, To the Desert

Weldon Kees, For My Daughter

The Person in the Poem

Natasha Trethewey, White Lies

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Luke Havergal

Ted Hughes, Hawk Roosting

Suji Kwock Kim, Monologue for an Onion

Langston Hughes, Theme for English B

Anne Sexton, Her Kind

William Carlos Williams, The Red Wheelbarrow

Irony

Robert Creeley, Oh No

W. H. Auden, The Unknown Citizen

Sarah N. Cleghorn, The Golf Links

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Second Fig

Thomas Hardy, The Workbox

For Review and Further Study

Francisco X. Alarcón, The X in My Name

Richard Lovelace, To Lucasta

Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est

Writing Effectively

Writing About Voice

Listening to Tone

Checklist: Analyzing Tone

Writing Assignment on Tone

More Topics for Writing

11. WORDS

Literal Meaning: What a Poem Says First

William Carlos Williams, This Is Just to Say

Marianne Moore, Silence

Robert Graves, Down, Wanton, Down!

John Donne, Batter my heart, three-personed God, for You

The Value of a Dictionary

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Aftermath

J. V. Cunningham, Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead

Carl Sandburg, Grass

Word Choice and Word Order

Robert Herrick, Upon Julia's Clothes

Kay Ryan, Blandeur

Thomas Hardy, The Ruined Maid

Richard Eberhart, The Fury of Aerial Bombardment

Wendy Cope, Lonely Hearts

For Review and Further Study

E. E. Cummings, anyone lived in a pretty how town

Anonymous, Carnation Milk

Gina Valdés, English con Salsa

Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

Writing Effectively

Writing About Diction

Every Word Counts

Checklist: Thinking About Word Choice

Writing Assignment on Word Choice

More Topics for Writing

12. SAYING AND SUGGESTING

John Masefield, Cargoes

William Blake, London

Wallace Stevens, Disillusionment of Ten O’clock

Gwendolyn Brooks, Southeast Corner

Timothy Steele, Epitaph

E. E. Cummings, next to of course to god america i

Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Tears, Idle Tears

Writing Effectively

Writing About Denotation and Connotation

The Ways a Poem Suggests

Checklist: Analyzing What a Poem Says and Suggests

Writing Assignment on Denotation and Connotation

More Topics for Writing

13. IMAGERY

Ezra Pound, In a Station of the Metro

Taniguchi Buson, The piercing chill I feel

T. S. Eliot, The winter evening settles down

Theodore Roethke, Root Cellar

Elizabeth Bishop, The Fish

Anne Stevenson, The Victory

Emily Dickinson, A Route of Evanescence

Jean Toomer, Reapers

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

About Haiku

Arakida Moritake, The falling flower

Matsuo Basho, Heat-lightning streak

Matsuo Basho, In the old stone pool

Taniguchi Buson, On the one-ton temple bell

Taniguchi Buson, I go

Kobayashi Issa, only one guy

Kobayashi Issa, Cricket

Haiku from Japanese Internment Camps

Suiko Matsushita, Rain shower from mountain

Neiji Ozawa, War forced us from California

Contemporary American Haiku

Etheridge Knight, Making jazz swing in

Lee Gurga, Visitor’s Room

John Ridland, The Lazy Man’s Haiku

Connie Bensley, Last Haiku

For Review and Further Study

John Keats, Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art

Walt Whitman, The Runner

T. C. Hulme, The Image

William Carlos Williams, El Hombre

Robert Bly, Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter

Rita Dove, Silos

Stevie Smith, Not Waving but Drowning

Writing Effectively

Writing About Imagery

Analyzing Images

Checklist: Thinking About Imagery

Writing Assignment On Imagery

More Topics for Writing

14. FIGURES OF SPEECH

Why Speak Figuratively?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Eagle

William Shakespeare, Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Howard Moss, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?

Metaphor and Simile

Emily Dickinson, My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Flower in the Crannied Wall

William Blake, To see a world in a grain of sand

Sylvia Plath, Metaphors

N. Scott Momaday, Simile

Other Figures of Speech

James Stephens, The Wind

Margaret Atwood, You fit into me

Dana Gioia, Money

For Review and Further Study

Robert Frost, The Silken Tent

Jane Kenyon, The Suitor

Robert Frost, The Secret Sits

A. R. Ammons, Coward

Heather McHugh, Language Lesson, 1976

Robert Burns, Oh, my love is like a red, red rose

Writing Effectively

Writing About Metaphors

How Metaphors Enlarge a Poem's Meaning

Checklist: Analyzing Metaphor

Writing Assignment on Figures of Speech

More Topics for Writing

15. SOUND

Sound as Meaning

Alexander Pope, True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance

William Butler Yeats, Who Goes with Fergus?

John Updike, Recital

Alliteration and Assonance

A. E. Housman, Eight O’clock

James Joyce, All Day I Hear

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The splendor falls on castle walls

Rime

William Cole, On my boat on Lake Cayuga

Hilaire Belloc, The Hippopotamus

Ogden Nash, The Panther

Gerard Manley Hopkins, God’s Grandeur

Reading Poems Aloud

Michael Stillman, In Memoriam John Coltrance

Writing Effectively

Writing About Sound

Listen to the Music

Checklist: Writing About a Poem’s Sounds

Writing Assignment on Sound

More Topics for Writing

16. RHYTHM

Stresses and Pauses

Gwendolyn Brooks, We Real Cool

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break

Ben Jonson, Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears

Dorothy Parker, Résumé

Meter

Max Beerbohm, On the imprint of the first English edition of The Works of Max Beerbohm

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Counting-out Rhyme

A. E. Housman, When I was one-and-twenty

William Carlos Williams, Smell!

Walt Whitman, Beat! Beat! Drums!

David Mason, Song of the Powers

Writing Effectively

Writing About Rhythm

Freeze-Framing the Sound

Checklist: Scanning a Poem

Writing Assignment on Rhythm

More Topics for Writing

17. CLOSED FORM

Formal Patterns

John Keats, This living hand, now warm and capable

Robert Graves, Counting the Beats

John Donne, Song (“Go and catch a falling star”)

Ballads

Anonymous, Bonny Barbara Allan

Dudley Randall, Ballad of Birmingham

The Sonnet

William Shakespeare, Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Claude McKay, America

Edna St. Vincent Millay, What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

Kim Addonizio, First Poem for You

A. E. Stallings, Sine Qua Non

R. S. Gwynn, Shakespearean Sonnet

Other Forms

Dylan Thomas, Do not go gentle into that good night

Robert Bridges, Triolet

Elizabeth Bishop, Sestina

Writing Effectively

Writing About Form

Turning Points

Checklist: Thinking About a Sonnet

Writing Assignment on a Sonnet

More Topics for Writing

18. OPEN FORM

Denise Levertov, Ancient Stairway

E. E. Cummings, Buffalo Bill’s

Stephen Crane, The Heart

Walt Whitman, Cavalry Crossing a Ford

Ezra Pound, Salutation

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Prose Poetry

Charles Simic, The Magic Study of Happiness

Seeing the Logic of Open Form Verse

E. E. Cummings, in Just-

Carole Satyamurti, I Shall Paint My Nails Red

Langston Hughes, I, Too

Writing Effectively

Writing About Free Verse

Lining Up for Free Verse

Checklist: Analyzing Line Breaks in Free Verse

Writing Assignment on Open Form

More Topics for Writing

19. SYMBOL

T. S. Eliot, The Boston Evening Transcript

Emily Dickinson, The Lightning is a yellow Fork

Thomas Hardy, Neutral Tones

Matthew 13:24-30, The Parable of the Good Seed

Edwin Markham, Outwitted

Yusef Komunyakaa, Facing It

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

For Review and Further Study

Ted Kooser, Carrie

Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

Lorine Niedecker, Popcorn-can cover

Wallace Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar

Writing Effectively

Writing About Symbols

Reading a Symbol

Checklist: Analyzing a Symbol

Writing Assignment on Symbolism

More Topics for Writing

20. WHAT IS POETRY?

Dante, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, J. V. Cunningham, Elizabeth Bishop, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, William Stafford, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Bly,Some Definitions of Poetry

21. POEMS FOR FURTHER READING

Anonymous, Lord Randall

Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

Margaret Atwood, Siren Song

W. H. Auden, Musée des Beaux Arts

Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

William Blake, The Tyger

Gwendolyn Brooks, the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

JudithOrtiz Cofer, Quinceañera

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Billy Collins, Care and Feeding

E. E. Cummings, somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

Marisa de los Santos, Perfect Dress

Emily Dickinson, I’m nobody! Who are you?

Emily Dickinson, I heard a Fly buzz — when I died

Emily Dickinson, Because I could not stop for Death

John Donne, Death be not proud

John Donne, The Flea

Paul Dunbar, We Wear the Mask

T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Rhina Espaillat, Bilingual / Bilingüe

Robert Frost, Mending Wall

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California

Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

Seamus Heaney, Digging

George Herbert, Easter Wings

Robert Herrick, To the Virgins to Make Much of Time

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Spring and Fall

Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Windhover

A. E. Housman, Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young

Langston Hughes, The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes, Harlem [Dream Deferred]

Randall Jarrell, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

Robinson Jeffers, To the Stone-cutters

Ben Jonson, On My First Son

Donald Justice, On the Death of Friends in Childhood

John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci

Ted Kooser, Abandoned Farmhouse

Philip Larkin, Home is so Sad

Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus

Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Learning to love America

Robert Lowell, Skunk Hour

Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress

John Milton, When I consider how my light is spent

Marianne Moore, Poetry

Marilyn Nelson, A Strange Beautiful Woman

Pablo Neruda, Translated by Alastair Reid, We Are Many

Lorine Niedecker, Poet’s Work

Yone Noguchi, A Selection of Hokku

Sharon Olds, The One Girl at the Boys’ Party

Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth

Jose Emilio Pacheco, High Treason

Sylvia Plath, Daddy

Alexander Pope, A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing

Ezra Pound, The River-Merchant’s Wife: a Letter

Dudley Randall, A Different Image

Henry Reed, Naming of Parts

Adrienne Rich, Living in Sin

Edwin Arlington Robinson, Miniver Cheevy

William Shakespeare, When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes

William Shakespeare, My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

Wallace Stevens, The Emperor of Ice-Cream

Larissa Szporluk, Vertigo

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player

Derek Walcott, The Virgins

Edmund Waller, Go, Lovely Rose

Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

WilliamCarlos Williams, Spring and All

William Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge

James Wright, Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

William Butler Yeats, When You Are Old

William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

Bernice Zamora, Penitents

22. READING A PLAY

A Play in Its Elements

Susan Glaspell, Trifles

Writing Effectively

Writing About Conflict

Conflict Resolution

Checklist: Analyzing Conflict

Writing Assignment on Conflict

More Topics for Writing

23. MODES OF DRAMA: TRAGEDY & COMEDY

Tragedy

Christopher Marlowe,A Scene from Doctor Faustus (in which Faustus sells his soul to the devil; Act 2, Scene 1)

Comedy

David Ives, Sure Thing

Writing Effectively

Writing About Comedy

Getting Serious About Comedy

Checklist: Writing About a Comedy

Writing Assignment on Comedy

More Topics for Writing

24. SOPHOCLES

The Theater of Sophocles

Staging

The Civic Role of Greek Drama

Aristotle's Concept of Tragedy

The Origins of Oedipus the King

Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald)

Writing Effectively

Writing About Ancient Greek Tragedy

Some Things Change. Some Things Don't.

Checklist: Analyzing Ancient Greek Tragedy

Writing Assignment on Sophocles

More Topics for Writing

25. SHAKESPEARE

The Theater of Shakespeare

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

A Note on Othello

William Shakespeare, Othello, the Moor of Venice

Writing Effectively

Writing About Shakespeare

Breaking the Language Barrier

Checklist: Writing About a Shakespearean Play

Writing Assignment on Tragedy

More Topics For Writing

26. THE MODERN THEATER

Realism and Naturalism

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House (Translated by James McFarlane)

Tragicomedy and the Absurd

Milcha Sanchez-Scott, The Cuban Swimmer

Writing Effectively

Writing About Dramatic Realism

What's so Realistic About Realism?

Checklist: Writing About a Realist Play

Writing Assignment on Realism

More Topics for Writing

27. PLAYS FOR FURTHER READING

Jane Martin, Beauty

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

August Wilson, Fences

WRITING

28. WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE

Start by Reading Actively

Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

Thinking about What You Have Read

Planning Your Essay

Prewriting: Discovering Ideas

Sample Student Prewriting Exercises

Developing a Literary Argument

Writing a Rough Draft

Student Writing, Sample Rough Draft

Revising

Checklist: Revision Steps

Some General Advice on Rewriting

Sample Student Essay, Final Draft

What’s Your Purpose: Some Common Approaches to Writing about Literature

The Form of your Finished Paper

Topics for Writing on Fiction

Topics for Writing on Poetry

Topics for Writing on Drama

29. WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER

Getting Started

Choosing a Topic

Finding Research Sources

Finding Print Resources

Using Online Databases

Using Visual Images

CHECKLIST: USING VISUAL IMAGES

Finding Reliable Web Sources

CHECKLIST: FINDING SOURCES

Evaluating Sources

Print Resources

Choose Web Sources Carefully

CHECKLIST: EVALUATING SOURCES

Organizing Your Research

Refining Your Thesis

Organizing Your Paper

Writing and Revising

Guarding Academic Integrity

Papers for Sale Are Papers that “F”ail

A Warning Against Internet Plagiarism

Acknowledging Sources

Quoting a Source

Citing Ideas

Documenting Sources Using MLA Style

Concluding Thoughts

Sample Student Research Paper

Reference Guide for Citations