Reader Response Essay Category
The English Department at Western Kentucky University is pleased to announce the 2026-2027 Reader Response Essay Category for The Barbara Ann Williford Memorial High School Writing Contest. Students should visit the links on the right to complete an application and submit an essay (MLA style; pdf format) based on the prompt below. The English Department will invite finalists, their teachers, and family to campus for a reception and ceremony on March 27, 2027 where they will be recognized.
The winners will receive cash prizes: 1st place - $200; 2nd place - $125; 3rd place - $75 and Teacher's Choice - $100.
Application and Essays are due February 27, 2027.
The following poem, “The Summer Day,” is written by Mary Oliver and was first published in her collection House of Light (1990). Read the poem carefully and craft a 300 – 500 word essay of literary analysis.
Prompt:
In “The Summer Day,” Oliver transforms an ordinary moment of detailed observation into something larger and more urgent by the end of the poem. Throughout the poem, small details in the natural world begin to function almost like signals, drawing the speaker toward deeper questions about meaning, purpose, and human experience. How does Oliver use literary devices such as imagery, repetition, pacing, and tone to develop this movement from observation to reflection? As you respond, you may also consider how the poem’s questions and moments of noticing connect to your own understanding of what gives life meaning or significance. Use language from the poem in your essay to support your discussion.
“The Summer Day”
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
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