8:240 Readings in American Literary Genres
Poetries of the American Left

Professor Dee Morris
Office: EPB 460
Office hours: W 2:00-3:00, F 11:30-12:30, & by appointment
dee-morris@uiowa.edu

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES

This course will examine the intersections between poetry and politics in three pivotal decades of U.S. history: the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s. For poets who positioned themselves as historical subjects committed to Leftist causes, these were consequential and often dangerous periods. We will look at the production of poetry in response to a series of specific crises in these decades, including the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, the Cold War and McCarthy Inquisition, the Vietnam War, and the social actions that marked the rise of feminism, Black Power, and the sexual liberation movements. The reading for the course will be intensive and immersive. Our texts will allow close scrutiny both of the careers of individuals (Langston Hughes, George Oppen, Edward Rolfe, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Ron Silliman) and the development of poetic movements (Dynamo Poets, Objectivist Poets, Black Arts, Confessional Poets, and L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets). Among the issues the course will examine are the development of documentary poem; the rise of small presses, periodicals, and broadsides; the art of polemics and manifestos; the rise of the anthology wars and the construction of a viable lineage for a left poetics; and the synergy between political commitments and poetic form. In addition to sustained and intensive reading, course work will include active participation in class discussions, annotated bibliographies of primary and secondary texts, frequent class presentations, book reviews, and abstracts for conference papers.

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KEY TO THE HOTLINKS ON THE CLICKSTRIP

Syllabus: This overview of the course includes a list of required texts, a reading schedule, descriptions of collaborative and written assignments, and a statement of classroom ethics.

Assignments: This page contains a description of the course goals, class protocols, and semester assignments.

Discussion: This password-protected discussion site contains two forums: one for postings in response to the readings; one for more general research questions, bibliographical observations, and synoptic comments.

Resources: This page contains a list of books on three-day reserve and an annotated bibliography of key books and essays on digital poetics.

Gallery: This page contains scanned exhibits intended to bring the visual back into the field of the literary. The exhibits will change with the nature of the texts we are reading. Please feel free to suggest book covers, historical prints, graphic novels, and other materials for inclusion in the exhibits.

MAPS: This splendid resource was developed by Cary Nelson and his coworkers to accompany the Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry. It is part of the clickstrip because we will consult it frequently for cultural and historical documents, interpretations of poems, biographical and archival materials, photographs, images, sound files, and external links. It is, for a course such as ours, a crucial component of each assignment.