Quality or Quantity??

natrisioga

Hi,

In regards to an English Poetry essay is there a required max or min number of poems you have to include in your answer??

All help would really be appreciated...

Thanks in advance

Lil' Smiler

It's to do with quality anyway but I think when I was doing it (3 years ago), it was a minimum of 3 poems. Normally it's easy enough to write about them if you get a pretty general theme

dip

Most people would generally do 3-5 imho

Depends on the poet though, and how much detail you can go into, eg. If Larkin comes up (and he better!:D)I plan on only doing 3 poems cos I can write about 1.5 pages on each poem written within the time, but if Rich comes up i find I can write much less on her poems so I'll probably do about 4-5.

Its completely up to yourself but I wouldn't really advise doing less than 3 (unless you can fit at least a small paragraph on a 3rd poem at the end).
Besides, sometimes (well, rarely) the question can be quite specific so there might be some poems you can't use.

PurpleFistMixer

I'm doing 4 or 5 for most of them. My essays always go over length though, (spent an hour on my Mahon essay in the mock and wrote about 6 pages), so I was thinking of doing even less.. Seems a waste to only talk about 4 when I know more though.

lovechem

I usually do about 4-5. Depends on the poet though, if I like the poems or not like!

Piste

My English teacher siad for full marks you need a minimum of four poems.

My teacher always raved on about at least 5 poems.

But I always do 4, Its enough to get full marks.

But It really depends on the poet and how well you know the work.. You could write about one poem, but you need to be extraordinary at english and be able to analyse it to the bone..

Just stick with 4.