The Mother

SMARTHINKING's E-structor Response Form

(Your marked-up essay is below this form.)

HOW THIS WORKS: Your e-structor has written overview comments about your essay in the form below. Your e-structor has also embedded comments [in bold and in brackets] throughout your essay. Thank you for choosing SMARTHINKING's OWL; best wishes with revising your paper!

*Strengths of the essay:

Welcome back to SMARTHINKING, Frank! My name is Patricia R., and I will be working with you this evening.  You’ve written a thought-provoking essay on a very moving poem; the seriousness of your analysis matches the seriousness of your essay’s subject matter. Excellent work, Frank!

Content Development:

For the most part, you use quotations liberally to illustrate the main points you make throughout your essay. Good job in fulfilling instructions given to you by your professor! However, throughout the essay, you include only fragments of lines from the poem.

At times, I am left to wonder what the poem means because you do not provide me with enough to go on with the parts of lines you cite. I suggest quoting entire lines at times, to vary the length and flow of quotations used in your essay, as well as to make sure the reader can fully and confidently interpret what you and the poet mean.

Along these lines, I also note in my remarks within your essay below that you sometimes leave out quotation marks, leaving me to wonder who is speaking—you are the poet. And, you run your words into words from the poem, with no markers. Carefully inventory each citation, making sure each one is fully punctuated and delineated. How could you clarify the following passage from your essay accordingly?

She cries with regret for her children “oh, what shell I say, how is the truth to be said? / You were born, you had body, you died”. (30-31) She reminds them that she loved them “Believe me, I loved you all” (33) even when she had abortion, and she still loves them “I Love you / All“(34-35).

Another...