04 November 2013

Regarding Papers

Usually when I need to write a paper for a class, I choose a topic on which I am certain, and write a certain paper from it. I always know where I am planning on going- maybe not how I'm going to get to it, but the point that I am trying to make is always clear. It's dull, but it makes for a solid paper.

This class is a little different from my experience with other courses, though- it's more exploratory, and with that I decided to do something a little different with my paper. It took me a long, long time to decide on which poems I was going to do my paper on, but finally I decided- "The Egg-Head" by Hughes has always evaded any sort of sense for me, and "Suicide off Egg Rock" by Sylvia Plath held some interesting similarities to it. I would compare the two, see if I could find any malleable similarities.

Before I compared the two poems I would have to understand them, first. I started with Egg-Head: I had the most trouble with dissecting that one. One paragraph became two paragraphs became the entire paper-- I had spent the entire report decoding Hughes' poem.

Woops.

I was worried about that for a while: the paper didn't have the format that I was used to at all for school papers. It didn't seem to argue a single point to me. It took me a while to realise that the whole process was a debate- this was my interpretation of the immense denseness that was the Egg-Head. This also gives me a topic for the next paper-- granted that I don't spend five more pages dissecting "Suicide off Egg Rock".

2 comments:

  1. I completely understand. I can see you getting caught up in decoding because hughes can get to you like that. It's like the more you read his poems the more you find other connections or other meaning that you just didn't see before. I would love to read it, it sounds very interesting.

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  2. I feel that "Woops" in my soul. I literally had no idea what I was doing and if I was doing it correctly for our midterm paper. But! I did find out some interesting information about the poems/poets that I don't think I could have found out without the confusion of what I was actually supposed to be doing.

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