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SYLLABUS

Poetry consists of gists and piths.

Ezra Pound. ABC of Reading


Text (available at Prairie Lights Books) & Websites:

Nelson, Cary, ed. Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry
anthology website http://www.english.uiuc.edu/map
terms McGraw-Hill Poetic Glossary
 

Bob's Byway Glossary of Poetic Terms
sounds PennSound

Reading Schedule:

I. poems as objects: ideogram, sonogram, sign
POEMS AS THINGS-IN-THE-WORLD
8/25
Anthologies:
Modern American Poetry, "Preface" (xxix)
mini-anthology on poems (first-day handout)
Stevens, "Of Modern Poetry" (142)
Neidecker, "Poet's work" (541)
Rukeyser, "Poem White Page / White Page Poem" (690)

anthology


poetry
8/30

Newspapers & Broadsides:
Hughes, "Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!"
--advertisement in December 1931 Vanity Fair (xerox)
Hughes, "Christ in Alabama" (508, 1232)
--"Scottsboro Boys" Trials, 1931-37
--readings of "Christ in Alabama"
Markham, "The Man with the Hoe" (18, 1224)
--Millet's "The Man with the Hoe"
--On Markham's "Man with the Hoe"
Brooks, "We Real Cool" (772, 1233)

broadside
post
 
POEMS AS IDEOGRAPHS
   
9/1

Ernest Fenollosa, Chinese Written Character
H.D., "Oread" (233)
Pound, "In a Station of the Metro" (204)
--readings of "In a Station of the Metro"

Angel Island (491-93): poems and commentary

ideogram
metaphor
simile
figure of speech

 

9/6

Concrete Poems: rain, oil, elimination (xerox)
Michael Mollohan's minimalist concrete poetry& browse website
Bob Brown's 1450-1950 (view sequentially)
Morgenstern, "Nightsong of the Fish" (xerox)

Williams, "Young Sycamore" (170)
Cummings, "Buffalo Bill" (346)
Louis, "Petroglyphs of Serena" (1134-1141)
Olds, "Ideographs" (1079)

Stefans, Dreamlife of Letters
Robert Kendall, Faith

concrete poetry

visual poetry

digital poetry
post
 
POEMS AS SONOGRAPHS
    

9/8

Scheerbart, "Kikakoku" (xerox) & click here for mp3
Louis Armstrong, Heebie Jeebies
Kaufman, "Crootey Songo" (819)
Mullen, from Trimmings (1187)
Tracie Morris poems

explore sound poems on the web

sound poetry

9/13
Plath, "Daddy" (984-86)
Plath, "Ariel" (987)
Plath, "Lady Lazarus" (988-90)

Interview with Sylvia Plath
sound devices
alliteration
assonance
consonance
post
 
POEMS AS HAND SIGNS
   
9/15
ASL Quest website: explore, view videos
Introduction to ASL poetry
basic dictionary of ASL terms

Clayton Valli, sign language poetry (video)
visit from Kimela Nelson, ASL teacher
 ASL  

9/20

write a poem or bring in a poem in one of the forms we've been working with: broadside, newspaper, or book form; concrete or visual page layout; sound poem or sign poem. Append a sentence or two about your choice of format: how does it work with the content and intention of the poem?

write a definition of the word "poem" that is capacious enough to include all the different forms we've been studying

representation & mimesis

poem

list of terms

II. poems as events: blues & slam
9/22

W. E. B. DuBois on Sorrow Songs

classic blues (lyrics in packet #1):
nobody know you, by Bessie Smith (1929)
nobody know you, by Eric Clapton (1992)
good morning little schoolgirl, by Mississippi Fred McDowell (1969)
good morning little schoolgirl, by Junior Wells (1965)
good morning little schoolgirl, by Grateful Dead (1968)

hellhound on my trail, by Robert Johnson (lyrics in Packet !)
terraplane blues, by Robert Johnson
terraplane blues, by John Lee Hooker

literary blues:
Sterling Brown, "Memphis Blues" (475-76), "Rent Day Blues" (481-82), "Choices" (485)
Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (503-04), "The Weary Blues" (504-05), "Backlash Blues" (524)
Ginsberg, "Father Death Blues" (873-74)
Dumas, "Low Down Dog Blues" (994-95)
Knight, "A Poem for Myself" (970)

blues

refrain

form

genre
 post
9/27

blues women:
Ma Rainey, Yonder Come the Blues (1926) & See, See Rider (1925)
Bessie Smith, Careless Love Blues (1925) & Backwater Blues (1927)
Billie Holiday, He's Funny That Way & Stormy Blues (1954)

Ma Rainey online
Bessie Smith online
Billie Holiday online

O'Hara, "The Day Lady Died" (289)
packet #2: poems for Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday & poems by Sherley Anne Williams

C.D. Wright, "Obedience of the Corpse" ( 1158)


signifyin'

dozens

image

mascon image

tone
&
voice

post

 

9/28
9/29

Wednesday night slam
no class / work on paper

 
report on slam

10/4

Slam Poems: Packet #1
Patricia Smith poems (1198-1201)
Patricia Smith, Undertaker, Skinhead,What It's Like to Be a Black Girl, and Sweet Daddy (xerox)
Marc Smith, "Chicago: Sandburg to Smith, Smith to Sandburg" (xerox)
--Sandburg, "Chicago" (107-08)
Marc Smith, Underdog
Marc Smith, Green Mill Slampapi website
Sekou Sundiata, "Philosophy of the Kool"
Gil Scott-Heron, "The Revolution Will Not Televised"
D. Knowledge, "The Revolution Will Be on the Big Screen"

Maggie Estep, Sex Goddess of the Western World (xerox & audio)
Maggie Estep web site

oral poetry
slam

PAPER
PRO.

10/6
Slam: The Video
Saul Williams packet (handout)


 
10/11

PAPER WORKSHOP

  


10/13

Slam Poems Packet #2
Patricia Smith, Skinhead and What It's Like to Be A Black Girl
Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not be Televised (text) and audio
D. Knowledge, The Revolution Will Be on the Big Screen

Saul Williams' poems: "Sha Clack," "Amethyst Rocks," "Wind's Song" (xerox)
Saul Williams website

interview with Saul Williams

EXTRA CREDIT: write your own blues or slam poem
EXTRA, EXTRA CREDIT: perform your poem

performance poem

PAPER
10/17
review for midterm (optional) at 6:00 pm in EPB 312 (regular room): bring list of terms and Nelson anthology
   list of terms
10/18
MIDTERM
  
MID/
TERM

 

III. poems as collaborations

 
POET TO POET: conversations . . . with Walt Whitman
    
10/20

Michael Chasar visit:

Whitman's life

Pound, "A Pact" (204)

Whitman, "I Hear America Singing" (2)
Hughes, "Let America Be America Again" (515)
Cummings, "next to of course god america i" (348)
Creeley, "America" (878)
Snyder, "I Went into the Maverick Bar" (957)

intertextuality
&
textuality

 
10/25
Whitman, "Vigil Strange I Kept" (3-4)
Ashbery, "Paradoxes and Oxymorons" (905)

Whitman, "One's-Self I Sing" (1)
Walker, "For My People" (735-36)
Levine, "They Feed They Lion" (927-28)

apostrophe
&
theme

 post

10/27

Whitman, "I Hear It Was Charged" and "A Glimpse"
Whitman, Sections 10-13, "Song of Myself" (xerox)

Ginsberg, "Love Poem on a Theme by Whitman" (848)
Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California" & "A Strange New Cottage in Berkeley" (xerox)
posts on Ginsberg & Whitman by Armstrong through Gilderbloom

Rich, "Twenty-One Love Poems" (945-53)
posts on Rich & Whitman by Hansen through Noonan

Doty, "Homo Will Not Inherit" (1183-86)
posts on Doty and Whitman by Pawola through Velles

Levis, "Whitman" (xerox)

wikipedia on the term intertextuality
wikipedia on the term queer

love poetry
queer poetry

sonnet form

posts on poems
11/1

Alexie, "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" (1220)
Momaday, poems (1002-1006)
Young Bear, "In Viewpoint: Poem for 14 Catfish and The Town of Tama, Iowa" (1162-1165)
Baca, "Mi Tio Baca El Poeta De Socorro" (1175-77)
Erdrich, "Indian Boarding School: The Runaways" & "Dear John Wayne" (1189-91)

  

11/3

Whitman, "As Adam Early in the Morning" (2)
Rich, from "An Atlas" (954)
Alexie, "Defending Walt Whitman" (xerox)

talking back: 1) write a poem in the style of Rich's "Dedications" in which you describe people you know reading Whitman; or 2) write a poem in which you yourself interact with Whitman in the style of Alexie's poem; or 3) write a poem in the style of Whitman's "As Adam Early in the Morning." Along with the poem, hand in a paragraph of analysis which points out the elements of style you see in the poet's work and what you've learned in trying to imitate those elements.

discussion of poet-to-poet terms

 



poem on or to Whitman
 
POETS AGAINST POETS: group manifestos
   
11/8

Imagism (1910s):
scapegoat lyrics: Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach" (xerox) & Pound's early poem "In Durance"
manifesto: Pound, "A Retrospect, Including A Few Don'ts"

model lyrics:
H.D. "Oread," "Mid-day," "Sea Rose," and "Garden" (233-34)
Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (278-82)

post: using Pound's "A Few Don'ts" as your battle plan, attack a non-Imagist poem. Be as savage as you like, but above all be specific:
1) last names A through M, attack Arnold
2) last names N through V, attack early Pound

lyric
slither
manifesto
meter vs. musical phrase
vers libre

three don'ts of Imagism

post
11/10

more Imagist poems:
Ezra Pound: "In a Station," "Portrait d'une Femme," "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter" (202-06) & other translations of "River Merchant's Wife"

review Chinese Written Character

William Carlos Williams: "Young Housewife," "Portrait of a Lady," "The Great Figure," "Spring and All," "To Elsie," "The Red Wheelbarrow" & "Young Sycamore" (164-70)

On Lowell, Pound, and Imagism

paratactic vs. hypotactic

Image
image network
symbol

thing poem
allegory

 
11/15

Black Arts (1960s/70s):
scapegoat lyrics:
--white poets writing black: Lindsay, "The Congo" (115-18)
--black poets writing white: Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask" (37) and Claude McKay, "If We Must Die" (315)
--Harlem Renaissance poets pulling punches: Countee Cullen, "Incident" (530)

Black Arts manifestos & other documents
Black Arts model poems: Amiri Baraka, "SOS" & "Black Art" (997-99),

History & Documents of the Black Arts Movement
Backgrounds and concepts of the Black Arts Movement

 Black Arts
ANTH.
PRO
11/17

more Black Arts poems:
Gwendolyn Brooks, "A Boy Died" & "To Those of My Sisters" (777-78)
Carolyn Rodgers, "how i got ovah" and "and when the revolution came" (1095-97)
Etheridge Knight, "Hard Rock," "Idea of Ancestry," "Poem for Myself," "For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide" (968-72)
Dudley Randall, "Ballad of Birmingham" (731-32) & Broadside

conversation on institutionalized religion:
Hughes, "Goodbye Christ" (512)
Baraka, "When We'll Worship Jesus" (999)
Carolyn Rodgers, "mama's God" (1097)

post: select one or two poems from the list above and write a paragraph comparing it to a manifesto from the Black Arts Movement:

Brooks: A-G
Rodgers: H-M
Knight: N-R
Randall: S-V

the collective

soul

Black aesthetic
Black Power

post

 

V. poems as documents
11/29

review of terms
discussion of blues paper and anthology introduction


12/1

Reznikoff, from Holocaust (364-70)
Rukeyser, "(To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century)" (688) & "Poem" (690)
Anthony Hecht, "'More Light! More Light!'" (816-17)
Robert Pinsky, "The Unseen" (1058-59)

About the Holocaust

documentary poetry

terms from last unit

12/6

Rolfe, "Asbestos" & "Season of Death" (609-10)
Beecher, "Report to the Stockholders" (557-59)
Kalar, "Papermill" (583)
Taggart, "Up State--Depression Summer" & "Mill Town" (336-39)
Fearing, "Dirge" & "Denoument" (498-501)
Hughes, "Come to the Waldorf-Astoria" (510, 1230-31)
Funaroff, "The Man at the Factory Gate" (626-27)
Olsen, "I Want You Women Up North to Know" (652-54)

About the Great Depression
A Depression Photo Essay
A Depression Art Gallery

notecard: list the three poems you find most effective on the topic of the Depression and be ready to indicate why you find them effective

imagination
metonymy
synecdoche

ANTH. (no extensions)

notecard
12/8

Rukeyser, "The Book of the Dead" (656-87)
readings of and about "The Book of the Dead"

post: taking one section of this poem, describe the way in which Rukeyser's poem turns a fact into a poetic figure (e.g., a synecdoche, metonymy, metaphor, or symbol). How does this poem become a documentary? How does this documentary become a poem?

 

ANTH.
REV.

post

 


12/11 review session for the final examination at 4:00 pm in 312 EPB (optional)
bring book, list of terms, and questions
12/12 final examination at 9:45 am in EPB 312