Writing Your Essay

•The Poetry essay section of the AP exam expects your essay to meet certain requirements.

•Use a diverse and intellectual vocabulary to procure your writing. (this shows your coherency of AP level vocabulary and that you know how to apply it to your writing)

•Be sure to pre write your essay. Write down your ideas in an outline format in order to direct your writing.

•Be sure you completely understand the prompts and the significance of the poem, remember that most prompts are STRUCTURAL . Their focus is to make sure that you are aware of the literary techniques the author in his/her writing. For example in the 2008B Poem: “Hawk Roosting” (Ted Hughes) and “Golden Retrievals” (Mark Doty) Prompt: The following two poems present animal-eye views of the world. Read each poem carefully. Then write an essay in which you analyze the techniques used in the poems to characterize the speakers and convey differing views of the world.

•When writing your essay, be sure to make the body paragraphs the details and use evidence from the poem to support your claims, your intro needs to be  short and not detailed. The conclusion is just a restatement of the introduction.