12 Essay Prompts for God I Feel Modern Tonight: Analytical Writing Topics

Introduction

Catherine Cohen’s God I Feel Modern Tonight weaves confessional poetry with sharp cultural critique, making it a rich text for literary analysis. The following 12 prompts are designed to help you examine character development, causality, relationships, thematic patterns, symbols, formal structure, foreshadowing, and the collection’s ending. Each prompt includes a rationale, a defensible sample thesis direction (not a full essay), and 3–5 evidence leads drawn from the chapter outline and available excerpts. For deeper context, explore the main book page or the character notes.

1. The Performance of Digital Identity

Why this prompt matters: The speaker constantly curates a persona online, yet her poems reveal the gap between performed self and real emotion. This prompt invites analysis of how social media shapes identity and authenticity.

Sample thesis direction: Cohen’s speaker uses digital platforms as a stage for ironic self-disclosure, but the poems ultimately expose the loneliness and anxiety that lurk beneath the performance.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 1 – “my work isn’t good but it’s online / and that’s what counts” (performance trumps quality)
Chapter 15 – “I guess I am the voice of my generation” said while dry‑swallowing birth control on a bike (ironic coronation)
Chapter 48 – “If you don’t have crippling anxiety you aren’t modern” (modernity equated with digital-age angst)
Chapter 53 – “one time I wanted so bad / to fall in love that I did it” (performative love)

Related theme: Performance and Authenticity

2. The Body as a Site of Critique and Comedy

Why this prompt matters: The speaker obsesses over her body—weight, health, sexual function—using humor to deflect shame. This prompt explores how Cohen turns bodily scrutiny into a tool for cultural critique.

Sample thesis direction: Through self‑deprecating comedy and blunt physical confession, Cohen reappropriates the male gaze, using the body as a lens to interrogate societal expectations of women.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 3 – “crum: to cry and cum at same time” (physical‑emotional release)
Chapter 27 – “I want to be thinner / but I have all my working parts” (body image vs. self‑preservation)
Chapter 31 – “whenever I think someone looks cool I realize / they are just thin” (thinness as cultural capital)
Chapter 57 – “why my left breast is so much / bigger than my right” (casual bodily scrutiny)

Related theme: Body Image and Self-Critique

3. Romantic Disconnection and the Search for Meaning

Why this prompt matters: Across the collection, romantic relationships are marked by misunderstanding, transactional intimacy, and a longing for something more. This prompt examines how Cohen represents modern love as both desired and unfulfilling.

Sample thesis direction: Cohen portrays romantic attachment as a cycle of craving and disappointment, where the speaker seeks transcendence through sex yet remains trapped in mundane power dynamics.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 8 – “I love you” / “I don’t know what love is” / he later becomes engaged (ambiguous commitment)
Chapter 18 – “I just want you to tell me / that fucking me / is the end of the world” (intimacy as apocalypse)
Chapter 34 – “the body is elastic” refrains after a breakup on the couch (emotional elasticity)
Chapter 62 – “if everything is special, nothing is” (the specialness paradox)

Related characters: The Lover / Partner, The Ex-Boyfriend

4. The Paradox of Self‑Help and Therapy

Why this prompt matters: The speaker regularly visits a therapist but resists growth; she buys into self‑care culture while mocking it. This prompt explores the tension between the desire for improvement and the comfort of stasis.

Sample thesis direction: Cohen satirizes the self‑help industry by showing a protagonist who knows the “right” answers but refuses to apply them, revealing the limits of therapy in the face of ironic detachment.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 2 – therapist says growth reduces suffering; speaker is skeptical (“what is she trying to prove?”)
Chapter 47 – Spotify playlist “undoes all the work I did in therapy” (digital nostalgia vs. growth)
Chapter 48 – “I once had a therapist tell me / you can’t gain weight / if you don’t put food in your mouth” (reductive advice)
Chapter 58 – speaker makes partner call her sexy four times; acknowledges regression during quarantine

Related character: The Therapist

5. Modern Anxiety and Urban Solitude

Why this prompt matters: New York City serves as a backdrop for constant anxiety—health scares, mortality worries, street encounters. This prompt asks how the urban environment amplifies the speaker’s inner turmoil.

Sample thesis direction: The city functions as both a stage for performative confidence and a trigger for existential dread, mirroring the speaker’s oscillation between control and vulnerability.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 1 – “sometimes I sigh so loud in public / that a stranger on the street will ask if I’m okay”
Chapter 36 – loud street‑cleaning machine; speaker realizes she has been screaming without awareness (involuntary release)
Chapter 40 – “street signs don’t know about you” – urban anonymity after a breakup
Chapter 38 – bodega reflection: “life is in the spaces between sex with you” (solitude as poetic space)

Related theme: Modern Anxiety and Discontent

6. Temporal Disruption and Nostalgia

Why this prompt matters: The speaker often looks backward—to college, past relationships, pre‑digital times—but the poems are rooted in the present. This prompt analyzes how Cohen uses temporal disjunction to critique nostalgia.

Sample thesis direction: Nostalgia in Cohen’s poems is a coping mechanism that ultimately fails, because the speaker recognizes that idealized pasts were just as flawed as the present.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 14 – “I haven’t listened to a new song since college” (stubborn nostalgia)
Chapter 28 – recalls a night of heavy drinking that led to the hospital; still had to attend Spanish class (past obligation)
Chapter 53 – “mailing letters is a great way / to feel like you’re from before / when no one could google you”
Chapter 56 – “is it possible to miss everything at once?” (global nostalgia)

7. The Symbolism of “the Modern” – Pop Culture and Commodification

Why this prompt matters: Cohen’s poems are littered with brand names, celebrities, and media references. This prompt investigates how pop culture functions as a shorthand for identity and a critique of commodification.

Sample thesis direction: By casually weaving Taylor Swift, Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Project Runway into her lyrics, Cohen exposes how consumer culture and celebrity replace genuine self‑expression.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 3 – “men love to date powerful women for 3–8 weeks” (dating as consumer behavior)
Chapter 15 – Lululemon murder title but poem ignores it (cultural amnesia about violence)
Chapter 26 – “I’m sorry I didn’t text you back… turns out it was from sex” (sex as remembered via brand encounter)
Chapter 48 – “I just want to go to an institution / where they charge you $12 / to add the meat chicken” (self‑care as transaction)

Related theme: Digital Culture and Social Media

8. Absurdity and Vulnerability in Post‑Intimacy Encounters

Why this prompt matters: Many poems begin after a sexual or intimate moment. The speaker uses absurd juxtaposition to process vulnerability. This prompt explores how humor functions as emotional armor.

Sample thesis direction: Cohen deploys absurdist details—calling a partner “dude,” googling stroke symptoms after a compliment—to deflect from raw vulnerability, only to reveal the pain beneath.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 9 – “asking for space and receiving it feels insane” (boundary ambivalence)
Chapter 13 – speaker called “dude” after sex; googles “things that happen to people” and finds home invasion list (fear under humor)
Chapter 19 – Facebook‑stalking ex’s fiancé; “I haven’t spoken to him in seven years” (post‑relationship surveillance)
Chapter 52 – pandemic poem: constant sex and string cheese; asks partner “are we dead up here?”

Related character: The Stranger

9. Circular Structure and the Illusion of Progress

Why this prompt matters: Several poems repeat opening lines or return to earlier images. The collection itself feels cyclical rather than linear. This prompt examines how form mirrors the speaker’s lack of growth.

Sample thesis direction: Cohen uses circular structures—repeated lines, recurring motifs (cold brew, beaded bag, phone)—to suggest that despite apparent change, the speaker remains trapped in the same emotional patterns.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 4 – opens and closes with the same line about going to Tuscany; trip yields no resolution
Chapter 41 – “being alone or with others is equally unenjoyable” – a thought the speaker admits is unoriginal (stasis)
Chapter 61 – “my best work comes when I feel hungover and mortified” – creative productivity linked to shame cycle
Chapter 47 – playlist undoes therapy; “buy something and feel better for twelve minutes” (repetitive consumer fix)

10. The Role of the “You” – Second‑Person Address as Confession and Performance

Why this prompt matters: Many poems are addressed to a “you” (lover, ex, therapist, friend). This prompt asks how the second‑person creates a sense of intimacy while also serving as a theatrical device.

Sample thesis direction: The “you” in Cohen’s poems is often a silent presence that the speaker performs for, blurring the line between genuine confession and staged monologue.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 5 – “poem I wrote after I told you I was empathetic” – the “you” is the ex who is now unreachable
Chapter 8 – “I love you” / “I don’t know what love is” – direct address to ex
Chapter 34 – “poem I wrote after you helped me assemble my new couch and then broke up with me on it” – object and addressee intertwined
Chapter 42 – “the night we met you kissed me in a closet and I slapped you and told you to ruin my life” – entire poem addressed to the lover

Related character: The Lover / Partner

11. Digital Voyeurism and Emotional Surveillance

Why this prompt matters: The speaker constantly checks social media, stalks exes, and monitors others’ lives online. This prompt explores how digital tools enable a new form of emotional parasitism.

Sample thesis direction: Cohen represents digital voyeurism as a compulsion that provides fleeting connection but deepens isolation, turning other people’s lives into content for the speaker’s self‑narrative.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 19 – Facebook‑stalking ex’s fiancé; “I only meant to browse his profile pictures”
Chapter 53 – “what’s it called when you have a sixth sense / that your ex is engaged?” (social media intuition)
Chapter 55 – a stranger who insulted the speaker later liked her feminist tweet (online contradiction)
Chapter 63 – a company that gave her free sunglasses unfollowed her on Instagram (fleeting digital validation)

Related theme: Digital Culture and Social Media

12. The Ending: “A Note About the Author” as Final Performance

Why this prompt matters: The collection ends not with a poem but with a biographical note. This structural choice blurs the line between persona and person, inviting reflection on the entire project’s authenticity.

Sample thesis direction: By concluding with a factual author biography, Cohen deliberately collapses the distance between confessional persona and real‑world performer, forcing readers to question how much of the collection is autobiographical and how much is crafted comedy.

Evidence leads:

Chapter 64 – lists real accomplishments: Joe’s Pub residency, Seek Treatment podcast, Edinburgh award, acting roles
Earlier poems – speaker calls herself “the voice of my generation” (chapter 15) and “the taylor swift of comedy” (chapter 28), which the biography partially validates
Foreshadowing: Chapter 15’s ironic claim is retroactively complicated by the real success described in chapter 64
Character arc: The speaker moves from anonymous anxiety to a named public figure, yet the tone remains self‑deprecating even in the bio (“Follow her while you’re young @catccohen”)

Related page: Questions and Answers

Using These Prompts

Each prompt is designed to be open‑ended enough to support a full‑length analytical essay. When writing, cite specific lines and link them to the broader patterns in the collection. For additional context on characters, revisit the character notes and theme guides. Remember that Cohen’s poems often resist easy resolution—the best essays will embrace ambiguity rather than force a single interpretation.