3) In an often heated and tendentious election season this past fall, the role of poetry in addressing the political concerns of a society could often seem minimal (at best). And yet, in The
Norton Introduction to Literature, a number of poems explicitly address what we might deem political concerns of a society, from the election of a president or conduct of a ruler, to tensions
between various social groups, to violence (such as war) which arise from political tensions. For this paper, choose one poem from the following list, and consider how it addresses political
issues. Make sure to look closely at its language and context, in order to understand how it does this. What is it saying about the state of society? How is it commenting on the politics of its
time? Once you have considered these questions, choose two additional poems from the list, and compare and contrast how the three poems’ deal with political concerns. What themes do they share in
common? What different political understandings might they portray? Support your comparisons with a minimum of three scholarly articles on the issues you come upon from Bryant’s library.

List
Allen Ginsberg, “America” (on Blackboard)
E.E. Cummings, “[next to of course god america i]” (745)
Lord Alfred Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (875)
Jessie Pope, “The Call” (879)
Walt Whitman, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” (880)
Anonymous, “Sir Patrick Spens” (886)
Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin” (891)
W.B. Yeats, “Easter 1916” (1001)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “Kubla Khan” (1104)