Evidence in a Poetry Essay
Everything in a poem is evidence
- Evidence is used to illustrate, clarify, exemplify, associate, amplify or qualify a point — unchanged.
- What changes is density: in a poem, a line break or a single word can be evidence.
- So you are never short of material, and the risk is grabbing whatever is nearest.
Writing about a simile because you spotted it is...
Evidence is selected for a purpose you already have.
The device hunt is the trap
- Finding a simile and writing about it because you found it is not selecting evidence.
- Evidence is selected for a purpose you already have.
- A device that serves no purpose in your argument is a fact about the poem, not support for a claim.
An accurate analysis of an irrelevant device still earns marks.
Evidence only counts when it supports the line of reasoning.
Sufficiency in a short essay
- Evidence is sufficient when its quantity and quality provide apt support for the line of reasoning.
- For a forty-minute poetry essay that usually means two or three quotations per paragraph, each explained.
- Six unexplained quotations look thorough and support nothing.
Select all the factors sufficiency depends on.
Six unexplained quotations look thorough and support nothing.
Recognising a device is not a reason to write about it. Evidence is selected for a purpose you already have — illustrate, clarify, exemplify, associate, amplify or qualify. A correctly identified metaphor that serves no purpose in your argument is a fact, not support.
Should this go in the essay?
Sort each candidate against a thesis about the past tense confining the praise.
Use the ____ process as a method: collect phrases first, form the thesis second.
The CED allows the interpretation to emerge from the evidence.
Recursion in the reading minutes
- The process is recursive: the interpretation can come from the evidence or the evidence from the interpretation.
- In practice, spend the first reading collecting phrases and the second forming the thesis they support.
- That is the recursion the CED describes, used as a method rather than an accident.
Match each candidate to its verdict, against a thesis about the past tense.
Only the first serves a purpose in this argument.
An evidence check for poetry
- Does every quotation serve one of the six purposes in my argument?
- Is any device here only because I recognised it?
- Does each quotation have a sentence explaining its relationship to the claim?
A student spots a simile in line 4 and writes a paragraph on it. It is a real simile, correctly analysed — and it has nothing to do with the thesis about the past tense. The paragraph is accurate and scores nothing, because evidence only counts when it supports the line of reasoning.
In a poem everything is dense enough to be evidence, so the risk is grabbing what is nearest. Select for a purpose you already have — the six purposes are unchanged. Sufficiency is quantity and quality: two or three explained quotations per paragraph beat six unexplained ones.