How to Organize Multiple Poems within an EE?

[Montressor]

Hello,

This is my first time ever posting in this forum so please excuse me if I am doing anything wrong...

But anyways, I am writing an English-based Extended Essay exploring the theme of Death within the Holy Sonnets of metaphysical poet John Donne.

My issue right now is that I am only choosing a few out of the total nineteen sonnets, because after reading through and annotating all of them, some of them skip past the topic of Death completely and will be irrelevant. I only want to talk about, for example, six of the nineteen. These six sonnets share some of the same ideas and concepts of Death, and some of them don't.

When I write this EE, is it better if I just talk about one sonnet at a time and organize them down a list, or do I just state a topic such as "Death carries imagery such as _____" and then just call upon them randomly, more than once if needed? I'm afraid if I do the latter, I'll look like a disorganized mess. But if I do the former, won't it seem tired and, in a way, redundant? I'm not sure...if any of you have done a poetry-based EE before me, please tell me your experiences.

Also, for the general format of a Group A1 EE, does it start like any ordinary English Essay? Introduction and thesis, body and conclusion?

Sorry for all the questions, thank you so much for your time.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

I would go by the different ways that death is portrayed since that gives you a more organised flow. The problem with just going poem by poem is that when you hit similiarities, you will repeat yourself. So I would suggest listing all the ways in which death is portrayed:

- language

- images

- metaphors etc...

And then go through those, and mention the poems that are relevant.

If you do it well, it will not be a disorganised messed, since you do have an actual structure around the central theme of the EE - death - and you are calling on the poems as examples.