Thinking of Secondary Sources...

How are thinking about secondary sources? 

• directly
• indirectly

What are you trying to use sources for?

• to support your understanding and arguments of their aesthetic (lyric, narrative, rhyme, etc.)
• to support your understanding and arguments of their subject matter...

• to provide historical context

• for the time period itself
• for the poet as part of a larger poetic movement

Which sources are the most important to your research?

• contextualize all sources before you use them...

• authority of each author: what are their credentials?

• Not all sources are to be equally used--which one's do you find most important to structuring your argument?

• spend more time integrating those authors into your essay sentences if they help drive home your claims!

A Few Important Poetry Critics

Hellen Vendler

Jaswinder Bolina

Harold Bloom

Stephen Burt

William Logan

A Helpful Database for criticism:

• Modern American Poetry