T. S. Eliot

poems:
--"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (MAP 278-82)
--"The Waste Land" (MAP 285-301)

commentary:
--critics on "The Waste Land" from MAPS
--T. S. Eliot's life and career

post: The voice in "The Love Song" seems relatively consistent, but "The Waste Land" seems to contain many voices. Read through "The Burial of the Dead," the first section of "The Waste Land," then pick one particular stanza that appeals to you. How many different voices are audible in that stanza? Where does one voice move into another? What themes seem to hold the stanza together?

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background:
--MAPS on The Great Depression
--browse America in the 1930s website

1930s poem chorus:
--Brown, "Rent Day Blues" (MAP 481-82) and "Memphis Blues" (MAP 475-76)
--Fearing, "Dear Beatrice Fairfax" (MAP 495)
--Grimke, "Fragment" (MAP 146)
--Hughes, "Chant for Tom Mooney" (CP 164)
--Lola Ridge, "Stone Face" (MAP 42-43) & MAPS on Tom Mooney
--Williams, "Proletarian Portrait," "The Yachts" (MAP 192-93), "Fine Work with Pitch and Copper" (handout)

Fearing, "St. Agnes Eve" (SP 1-3)

post: This post, our first on a "poem chorus," builds on our discussion of "The Waste Land" as a literal (not just symbolic or mythic) document: a snapshot of a certain historical moment. After reading the historical overviews of the Great Depression and looking at the photos on the MAPS site, select a theme, image, person, or event that returns in two or three of the chorus poems. How do these poems speak to one another? What are the various attitudes they take up toward the events they describe? How do their poetic strategies--images, symbols, metaphors, sounds, etc.--amplify and enrich our picture of the Depression?

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Tom Mooney poems:
--Hughes (CP 164)
--Ridge (MAP 42-3)

left politics: definitions
--what is Left-Wing Politics?
--what is Communism?

left manifestos:
--Marx, Communist Manifesto(1848)
--Trent and Cheyney, Poetry and Politics: Excerpts from the Introduction to An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry (1929)
--Mike Gold, Proletarian Realism (1930)

left journals of the 1930s:
--The New Masses - Mark Atherton
--Daily Worker - Jenny Miller
--Crisis - Alex Wilder

posts: Beginning with one idea from the manifesto written by Trent and Cheyney or by Mike Gold, post a question or series of questions about one of the poems from the poem chorus assigned for Tuesday. Your aim is find a productive way to stimulate thinking about the relationships between a manifesto and the content and form of a poem.

Depression chorus

MAP poets: Beecher, "Report to the Stockholders" & "Beaufort Tides" (557-60); Fearing, "Dear Beatrix Fairfax" through "Denouement" (494-501); Funeroff, "The Man at the Factory Gate" (626-27) & "Goin Mah Own Road" (629-30); Jerome, "A Negro Mother" (372); Kalar, "Papermill" (583); Rolfe, "Season of Death" (609-10); Spector, "Wiseguy Type" (371); Taggart, "Up State--Depression Summer" & "Mill Town" (336-39); Wright, "We of the Streets" (584)

Compilation chorus (handout), from Cary Nelson's Revolutionary Memory

Hughes, "Come to the Waldorf Astoria" (MAP 1230-31)
Hughes, "Steel Mills" (CP 43)

& for your listening enjoyment, Taylor Mali's How to Write A Political Poem (courtesy of Derek)

post: In this post, I'd like to take seriously Mike Gold's insistence that culture is not a mystified or rarified transmission of genius but a social product, the creation of a specific class society at a specific moment in time. Critics in the 1940s and 1950s read "The Waste Land" as a timeless monument of high modernist culture. How should we read the "compilation chorus" of poems from the 1930s put together by Cary Nelson? What are its images, who are its heroes, what is its landscape, what are its values, what are its passions? Taking any of these angles of approach and drawing on the poems we've read in the last couple of weeks, write a description of the "compilation chorus" as a representative text of poetries of the left in the 1930s.

Hughes' life and career

Hughes, Poems 1921-1930, with particular emphasis on "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (23), "Negro" (24), "Laughers" (27-8), "Mother to Son" (30), "Song to a Negro Wash-woman" (41-2), "I, Too" (46), "The Weary Blues" (50), "Cross" (58), "Bound No'th Blues" (76), "Brass Spittoons" (86), "The Cat and the Saxophone"(89), "Mulatto" (100-01), and "Militant" (131)

Hughes' essays:
--The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926)
--To Negro Writers (1935)

Hughes in the 1930s

post: We've read a number of manifestos written by and for poets of the thirties and discussed some of the ways in which these manifestos changed the nature of poetry between the 1920s and 1930s. For this post, read Hughes's manifestos, "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" and "To Negro Writers," and discuss the ways in which the principles declared in these documents shape Hughes's poetic strategies. To amplify and support your ideas, give examples from at least two Hughes poems in today's list.

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Hughes on the Scottsboro Boys:

About the trials of the Scottsboro Boys:
--"Scottsboro" website
--in-class video: "Scottsboro: An American Tragedy," with additional information on website

Hughes on Scottsboro:
--"Scottsboro" (CP 142-43)
--"Christ in Alabama" (CP 143 / MAP 1232 / handout)
--"Town of Scottsboro" (CP 168)
--"Ballad of Ozzie Powell" (CP 188-89)
--"August 19th . . . " (CP 204)

Another voice in the Scottsboro chorus:
--Boyle, "A Communication to Nancy Cunard" (MAP 542-46)

reports on Scottsboro:
--events (Matt Rinker)
--trials (Elaine Fabian)
--coverage (Leslie Koppenhaver)
--aftermath (Patrick Podgorski)

listen to John Coltrane's Alabama

post: this post is an exercise on reading-in-context. It asks you to read three renditions of Hughes's poem "Christ in Alabama": a straight rendition in the Hughes Collected Poems, the illustrated rendition in MAPS, and the Contempo publication with adjacent articles in the handout. Don't privilege any one of the three publications over the others, but in your post discuss the ways these publications lead you to read the poem. What difference does it make to have Zoe Ingram's illustration? What difference does it make to have the newspaper articles? When you return to the stripped down version in the anthology, how does your reading of the poem change?

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reports

conclusion of Scottsboro discussion

Hughes on the Spanish Civil War:

Background: Spanish Civil War

Picasso's Guernica

Hughes poems:
-- "Song of Spain" (CP 195-97)
-- "Letter from Spain" (CP 201-02)
-- "Postcard from Spain" (CP 202-03)
-- "Air Raid: Barcelona" (CP 207-09)

post: Reread the Scottsboro poems listed for Tuesday. In 1932, Hughes published "Christ in Alabama," "Scottsboro," "The Town of Scottsboro," and "Justice" (CP 31) together with a short play in a pamphlet titled Scottsboro Limited, which he sold as he toured through the south. Read these four poems together, then pick one formal feature of poetry (e.g., rhythm, rhyme, figurative language, stanzaic form) and discuss how Hughes turns that feature to his use in this pamphlet.

Spanish Civil War chorus:

Rolfe, "First Love" and "Elegia" (MAP 610-14) and "City of Anguish" (handout)
Funaroff, "The Bull in the Olive Field" (MAP 627-28)
Levine, "Francisco, I'll Bring You Red Carnations" (MAP 928-31)
Taggart, "To the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade" (MAP 342)
Davidman, "Snow in Madrid" & "Near Catalonia" (handout)
Millay, "Say that We Saw Spain Die" (MAP 329-30)
Niedecker, "1937" (handout)
Fearing, "The Program" (1938) (SP 79)

dispatches to New Masses (handout):
--Dorothy Parker, "Incredible, Fantastic . . . and True"
--Barrie Stavis, "Barcelona Horror" (excerpt)

reports on Spanish Civil War:
--origins & causes (Austin McMilin)
--allies & progress (Andrew Ferguson)
--siege of Madrid (Mike Wall)
--outcome (Autumn Yancey)

The Clash, Spanish Bombs (from London Calling, 1979), with a rough translation of the Spanish chorus here
songs sung by Spanish Republicans during the war available online

post: This post asks you to approach the "Spanish Civil War chorus" from the point of view of the many things a poem can do. Remember that these poems were published in the heat of the event, often in journals next to news items and editorials. Pick one poem from the chorus, then, and write a paragraph discussing it as 1) a description of events, 2) a directive or injunction to the audience to do something, 3) a commissive or commitment on the part of the author to do something, and/or 4) a declaration or a statement that in itself comprises an action. Not every poem will do all of these things, of course, but as you work with the poem, keep asking yourself what makes it effective at what it aims to accomplish.

Before posting, it will be helpful to review the Wikipedia entry on speech-act theory

Spanish Civil War poems:

Hughes poems:
-- "Song of Spain" (CP 195-97)
-- "Letter from Spain" (CP 201-02)
-- "Postcard from Spain" (CP 202-03)
-- "Air Raid: Barcelona" (CP 207-09)

Blues & the anti-blues:

definition: What is the blues?
--Robert Johnson's Hellhound on My Trail

Hughes' Weary Blues in the 1920s vs. his anti-Blues of the 1930s:
-- 1920s blues: "The Weary Blues" (50), "Midwinter Blues" (65),"Homesick Blues" (72), "Bound No'th Blues" (76), "Po' Boy Blues" (83), "The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)" (89), "Young Gal's Blues" (123)
-- 1930s anti-blues: "Tired" (135), "Negro Ghetto" (137), "The Negro Mother" (155-56), "Florida Road Workers" (158-59), "Open Letter to the South" (160-61), "Good Morning Revolution" (162), "Goodbye Christ" (166), "Song of the Revolution" (170), "Cubes" (175-76), "One More 'S' in the U.S.A." (176-77), "Ballad of Roosevelt" (178), "Let America Be America Again" (189-91), "White Man" (194)

more blues:
--Sterling Brown, "Memphis Blues" (475-76), "Rent Day Blues" (481-82), "Choices" (485)
--Kenneth Fearing, "20th Century Blues" (SP 59-60)

post: For this post, begin by defining the term "the blues" then compare and contrast a Hughes poem from the 1920s with a poem from the 1930s. What has happened in the decade between his "Weary Blues" and his rejection of the blues? How does his poetry changed in this decade? Choose two poems that will allow you to be specific in your commentary and consider such issues as rhyme, rhythm, figurative language, and (especially) tone.

visit from Barrett Watten:
--Barrett Watten and Kenneth Fearing: duet on the 2004 election
--War=Language, or Watten on the Iraq war(s)

1930s readings / listenings:
--Fearing Poems 1935 (SP 30-67)
--Roosevelt fireside chats Nos. 1 & 19

Watten home page

project 1 &
imitation

Documentary: Photography & Poetry
--McCausland, Elizabeth. Documentary Photography (1939)
--A Depression Photo Essay
--Documentary Photography as a Medium

reports on Depression documentary photography:
--FSA photos (Derek Otte)
--Berenice Abbott (Cassie Ruppert)

Documentary: Poems
--Tillie Olsen, "I Want You Women Up North to Know" (MAP 652-54) and Filipe Ibarro's letter to New Masses
--Mike Gold's "Workers Correspondence" poems: "Birmingham, Ala.," "Indianapolis, Ind.," "Astabula, O.," & "Flint City Jail, Mich." (in Gold packet)
--Charles Reznikoff, poems from Testimony & Holocaust (MAP 354-370)

post: This post asks you to explore what the term "documentary poem" might mean by examining a piece of writing from Reznikoff's Testimony or Holocaust. Both of these sequences were constructed from case histories or court testimony found in legal documents. After reading through the poems, pick one that strikes you as effective and discuss what makes it a "poem." How does Reznikoff's presentation of this material differ from its presentation in a prose paragraph in a casebook? What is the "value added" by poetic form?

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reports

continuing discussion of the short documentary poems of Olsen, Gold, and Reznikoff

reports:
--Walker Evans (Mark Magoon)
--Ben Shahn (Laura Schell) / postponed

begin reading & viewing materials for Oct. 12th

post: For this post, begin with Derek's example of the three photographs of the Mississippi plantation owner (available on Derek's handout or here). The aim of documentary is to deliver the facts, but as these photos demonstrate, facts are always focused and framed by a series of decisions made by the photographer or poet. How do poems--even poems that are composed entirely of quotations--frame their facts? Select either a second Reznikoff poem or Olsen's transcription of Ibarro's letter and treat the poem as a snapshot of discourse: how does Reznikoff or Olsen cut, frame, and "compose" source material to guide our interpretation? In your commentary, consider the effects of the compositional decisions the poet makes. Is a poem an effective vehicle for "documentary" work?

Documentary & the Long Poem:

two documents of the Holocaust:
--Edward R. Murrow report from Buchenwald
--Reznikoff's Holocaust poems

Pare Lorentz's documentary film, The River

Muriel Rukeyser's long poem "The Book of the Dead" (MAP 656-87)
--background for "The Book of the Dead"
--House of Representatives subcommittee report

[and for an interesting detour, view Muriel Rukeyser's 118-page FBI file, available here ]

post: Along with The Plow That Broke the Plains and Fight for Life, Pare Lorenz's The River (1936) established the genre of documentary film for the thirties. Rukeyser's "Book of the Dead" (1938) emerged from a trip she planned to take with a friend who was a documentary filmmaker. In this post, work with the ways in which Rukeyser seems to plan her poem as a documentary along the line of Lorenz's film. What themes, techniques, and subjective stances in the first part of this poem seem to be in conversation with Lorenz's work? What elements of this poem are influenced by and participate in the documentary movement of the 1930s?

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Documentary & the Long Poem: continuing discussion of "The Book of the Dead"

reread "The Book of the Dead"
Rolfe, "Asbestos" (1933) (MAP 609)

Eliot, "The Burial of the Dead" (MAP 286-88)

post: In this post, compare and contrast the waste land in Eliot's "The Burial of the Dead" with the waste land portrayed in Rukeyser's "Book of the Dead." What are the causes, what are the possible cures, of these two different terrains of desolation and despair? Focus your remarks through a specific image or cluster of images, mythic plot, or poetic technique you see at work in both poems. Support your conclusions with specific examples.

no class:
--catch up on posts
--read Hughes imitations and Poets of the Left packets
--review terms for midterm <terms posted on discussion page 11/19>

Blues and Anti-Blues: reprise

definition: What is the blues?
--Robert Johnson's Hellhound on My Trail

Hughes' Weary Blues in the 1920s vs. his anti-Blues of the 1930s:
-- 1920s blues: "The Weary Blues" (50), "Midwinter Blues" (65),"Homesick Blues" (72), "Bound No'th Blues" (76), "Po' Boy Blues" (83), "The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)" (89), "Young Gal's Blues" (123)
-- 1930s anti-blues: "Tired" (135), "Negro Ghetto" (137), "The Negro Mother" (155-56), "Florida Road Workers" (158-59), "Open Letter to the South" (160-61), "Good Morning Revolution" (162), "Goodbye Christ" (166), "Song of the Revolution" (170), "Cubes" (175-76), "One More 'S' in the U.S.A." (176-77), "Ballad of Roosevelt" (178), "Let America Be America Again" (189-91), "White Man" (194)

more blues:
--Sterling Brown, "Memphis Blues" (475-76), "Rent Day Blues" (481-82), "Choices" (485)
--Kenneth Fearing, "20th Century Blues" (SP 59-60)
--Muriel Rukeyser, "George Robinson: Blues" (MAP 668-69)

post: For this, the final post on Rukeyser's "Book of the Dead," concentrate on "George Robinson: Blues." Rukeyser's long poem is a collage of many different genres, among them documentary reportage, travelogue, workers' correspondence, first-person story-telling, and lyric. Looking at "George Robinson," how does Rukeyser's version of the blues differ from the other blues we've read? What does Rukeyser add to the blues form? On the flip side of that question, why does only one poem in "Book of the Dead" take the form of the blues? Explore the limits of the blues for Rukeyser's project in this poem by comparing "George Robinson: Blues" to "The Dam," "Praise of the Committee," or "Mearl Blankenship."

What is Objectivist poetry?

Louis Zukofsky
--"To My Wash-stand" (MAP 551-53)
--"Mantis" (MAP 553-54)
----- what is a sestina?

Zukofsky's Poetry manifestoes: "An Objective'" & "A Statement for Poetry" (handout)

commentary:
--A biographical essay on Zukofsky by Mark Scroggins
--four critics on "Mantis": Taggart, Scroggins, Vanderborg, Davidson

post: After reading Zukofsky's poem "Mantis" several times, read his Objectivist manifestos and look over what critics have said about this poem. One of the most powerful sentences in "An Objective" declares, "Writing occurs which is the detail, not mirage, of seeing, of thinking with the things as they exist, and of directing them along a line of melody." What does it mean to "think with things as they exist"? Explore the meaning of this sentence as it is clarified--or not clarified--by the poem "Mantis."

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McCarthy Inquisition

background:
-- who was McCarthy?
-- what were the Army-McCarthy Hearings?
-- documents on McCarthyism
--Richard Rovere, "Senator Joe McCarthy"
--Arthur Miller on McCarthy

Edwin Rolfe:
"After Tu Fu," "Now the Fog," "A Letter to the Denouncers," "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," "A Poem to Delight My Friends Who Laugh at Science-Fiction," "In Praise Of," and "Little Ballad for Americans--1954" (MAP 615-19)

Thomas McGrath:
"Against the False Magicians" (MAP 747)
Statement to HUAC
McGrath on tactical & strategic poetry

"Good Night, and Good Luck" (2005) (in-class video, 93 minutes)
--who was Edward R. Murrow?
--movie website

Kenneth Fearing
"Family Album" (SP 162-68)
Fearing, "Reading, Writing, and the Rackets" -- Preface to New and Selected Poems (1956)

note: since the film's running-time exceeds the length of our class, we'll start the film about 10:50 a.m. and continue as long as we have the room. If you have commitments after 12:10, however, you should feel free to leave in order to make them.

no class / begin Hughes reading for Nov. 30th and work on proposal for paper due on December 7th (optional first draft may be turned in on December 5th with comments to be returned by email)

Hughes in the 1950s & 1960s

"Prelude to Our Age" through "Consider Me" (379-86)
"Montage of a Dream Deferred" (387-429)

additional jazz poets (MAP):
Kaufman, "The Biggest Fisherman," "Crootey Songo," and "No More Jazz at Alcatraz" (818-20)
Mullen, poems from Trimmings & S*Perm**K*T (1187-88)

audio collection: "Brilliantly outside, bebop was intimately if indirectly related to the militancy of its moment. Militancy and music were undergirded by the same social facts; the music attempted to resolve at the level of style what the militancy fought out in the streets" (Eric Lott)

Montage of a Dream Deferred,with Leonard Feather and bassist Charles Mingus (look under Hughes, then Dream Montage)
Drum Boogie, Gene Krupa and His Orchestra
Salt Peanuts, classic bebop by Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker on sax, and Sid Catlett on drums (May 1945)
Ko Ko, Charlie Parker's Ri Bop Boys with Parker, Gillespie, Curly Russell on bass, Max Roach on drums (November 1945)
So What, Miles Davis Sextet (from Kind of Blue)
Freddie Freeloader, Miles Davis Sextet (from Kind of Blue)
A Night in Tunesia, Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, Charlie Parker on tenor, Bud Powell on piano, Max Roach on drums, Charles Mingus on bass (recorded May 15, 1953 in Massey Hall)
Yardbird Suite, Charlie Parker Septet (with Miles Davis, Lucky Thompson, and Dodo Marmarosa)
My Favorite Things, John Coltrane on sax, McCoy Tyner on piano, Steve Davis on bass, Elvin Jones on drums (1960)

Hughes in 1961
Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz (1961)
Wikipedia's definition of the dozens & bebop

Ghosts: First Variation, sixties free jazz by Albert Ayler on sax, Gary Peacock on bass, Sunny Murray on drums (1964)

post: In an era in which speech was heavily policed by McCarthy's Cold War paranoia and academic poetry was dominated by intricate and apolitical formalist work like Wilbur's "Baroque Wall-Fountain," jazz seemed to offer Hughes, Kaufman, and others a zone of improvisation and release. Pick a short poem from Hughes's series Montage of a Dream Deferred (1948-51) or Ask Your Mama (1961) and discuss the interrelationship between jazz and political statement. You might want to think about the differences between Hughes's early blues poetry and his jazz poetics and/or the similarities between his jazz poems and some of the bebop and free jazz you've listened to along with this reading.

proposal for paper

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Emerging Poets: Adrienne Rich

poems:
--from A Change of World (1951) with Auden's Foreword (AR 3-5; 277-79)
--from Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1954-62),especially "The Knight" & "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law"
--from Necessities of Life (1962-65), especially "The Trees"
--from Leaflets (I965-68) (AR 8-37), especially "Nightbreak"
--from The Will to Change (1971) (AR 38-45), especially "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children"

Rich's essays:
--"Poetry and Experience: Statement at a Poetry Reading" (1964) (AR 165)
--"When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision" (1971) (AR 166-77)

critical essays (optional):
Gelpi, "Adrienne Rich: The Poetics of Change" (1973) (AR 282-99)
Vendler, "Ghostlier Demarcations, Keener Sounds" (AR 299-310)

post: In this post, choose one early poem (from A Change of World, Snapshots, or Necessities) and one later poem (from Leaflets or The Will to Change) in order to explore Rich's notions of change: how does change happen, why is it necessary, what are its risks, what are its rewards? In your analysis, work toward a consideration of how the notion of change changes for Rich between her first volume, A Change of World, and her sixth, The Will to Change.

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1st draft
(optional)

Emerging Poets: LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka

Jones, The Beat Period (BR 1-17)
--poems from Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note ((3-15)
--"How You Sound?" (16-17)

Jones, Transitional Period (BR 19 ff)
--on the Blues (BR 21-50)
--poems from The Dead Lecturer (51-74), especially "An Agony. As Now." (52-53) and "BLACK DADA NIHILISMUS" (71-73)

paper due

required post: compose and post an essay question for the final examination
--1) the question should be synoptic, reaching back through and connecting the reading we've done this semester;
--2) it should be focused in order to allow for the examination of similarities and differences in the work of the poets we're read
--3) it should have the potential to lead an essayist toward new perceptions about poetries of the left
--4) it could start with a quotation from one of the poems or manifestos that seems to you to catch something essential about poetry and politics
--5) make it a real question, one that doesn't lead to an answer you already know