Elegy: "Nov 22, 1988" and "Billionaire of Life" by Ishmael Reed

Students will write a 600 word essay in response to the following prompt:

An elegy is a serious poem often reflecting on or lamenting the passing of some person. In Ismael Reed’s poems “Nov 22, 1988” (291-294) and “Billionaire of Life” (Reed 400-402), he not only laments the deaths of Kennedy and his mother and celebrates their lives but also uses the poems to comment on society. Write an essay that examines each poem and explains how Reed’s elegy on the subject of the poem is used for social commentary.

Primary Sources

Reed, Ishmael. "Billionaire of Life." New and Collected Poems 1964-2007. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2007. Print. 400-404.

Reed, Ishmael. "Nov 22, 1988." New and Collected Poems 1964-2007. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2007. Print. 291-294.

Requirements:

Length: Your essay must be a minimum of 600 words.
Documentation Format: You must include an MLA formatted Works Cited page that includes correctly formatted internal citations for all source material used.
Sources: You are restricted to the assigned poem and the secondary sources..
Number of sources: You must make frequent references to specific details in each poem (properly documented).
Format: The essay must be in MSWord format (.doc or .docx)
Warning: Do not read or refer to resources beyond those available in our course.

For this essay, do not use any sources other than the poems themselves. You may use a dictionary to help you with words with which you are not familiar, but do not refer to the dictionary definitions in your essay. Base your discussion of the theme on your own close reading of the poems you have selected.

Document your sources by identifying the poems (titles in quotation marks) and the authors. When referring to lines within each poem, you may identify them by line number. When quoting from the poems, quote exactly. Do not change punctuation or capitalization except, as needed, end punctuation. Be sure to use a slash ( / ) to indicate a line break in the original poem. Remember, if you do not need the punctuation at the end of your quote, you may eliminate it or replace it with the punctuation you need to end your sentence. For example, in the following sentence about Shakespeare's poem, "That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold," the comma at the end of the line from the poem is unneeded, but a period is needed to end the sentence:

Shakespeare compares his life to "the twilight of such day / As after sunset fadeth in the west."

Notice the / indicating the line break and the period which ends the sentence replacing the comma in the original.

Proofread carefully the final draft for spelling, grammar, and punctuation as well as clarity, conciseness, and completeness. The final draft should be typed, double spaced, one inch margins, in Arial or Times Roman 12 pt. Your essay should be a minimum of 600 words (two typewritten pages, about five handwritten pages) in length.