Schedule

Note: While I anticipate that the basic course structure below will remain in place, I will be adding–and potentially changing–readings in advance of any given week. The required reading for any given week will always be provided, in final form, no less than one week prior to that meeting date. Readings for week 3, for example, will be finalized no later than our meeting time for week 2. All readings beyond the required course text can be found under the “Readings” tab on the course website.

Week 1: January 11–Course introduction, preparatory readings

Readings:

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006)

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Fire of Drift-Wood” (42-43)
• John Greenleaf Whittier, “For Righteousness’s Sake” (51-52)
• Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Contentment” (59-61)
• Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, sections 1 and 2 (84-85) & “To a Stranger” (144-145)
• Herman Melville, “Shiloh” (154)
• E.A. Robinson, “The House on a Hill (194-195) and “Richard Cory” (196)
• Stephen Crane, “In the Desert” (203-204)
• Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask “ (210)
• Emily Dickinson, “I died for beauty—but was scarce (170); The Brain—is wider than the sky (175); “Pain—has an Element of Blank” (177).

Historical Poetics:

• Louis Untermeyer, American Poetry Since 1900 (1923)

Critical Readings:

• Jahan Ramazani et. al, eds, “Introduction,” The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (2003)–read the introductions to both the “modern” and “contemporary” volumes
• John Timberman Newcomb, “The Emergence of ‘The New Poetry,'” fromThe Cambridge Companion to Modern Poetry (2015), ed. Walter Kalaidjian

Week 2: January 18—Imagism, Symbolism, Vorticism and the Modernist Experiment

Readings:

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006) unless otherwise noted

• Gertrude Stein: “Guillaume Apollinaire” (240); “Cezanne” (240), “If I told him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso” (242-244); from Tender Buttons, Objects” (LINK)
• Wallace Stevens: “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” (249); “Sunday Morning” (250-252); “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (255-257); “Anecdote of a the Jar” (257-2580); “Tea at the Palaz of Hoon” (258); “The Snow Man” (258-259); “Study of Two Pears” (264-265); “Of Modern Poetry” (267); “The Motive for Metaphor” (267-268).
• Mina Loy: “Gertrude Stein” (276)
• William Carlos Williams: “The Young Housewife” (277); “Danse Russe” (278); “Portrait of a Lady” (278-279); “By the Road to the Contagious Hospital” (281); “The Rose is Obsolete” (282-283); “To Elsie” (284-285); The Red Wheelbarrow” (285-286)
• Ezra Pound: “The River-Merchants Wife: A Letter” (301-302); “In a Station at the Metro” (302); “The Lake Isle” (302-303); from “Hugh Selwyn Mauberly” (305);
• Robert Frost: “Mending Wall” (212-213)
• H.D.: “Helen” (316); “Epitaph” (316-17); “The Moon in Your Hands” (317)
• Marianne Moore: “Poetry”: (323-324); “The Fish” (324-325); “To a Steamroller” (235); “An Octopus” (333-339)
• T.S. Eliot: “The Waste Land” (351-65)
• Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica” (385-386)

Poetry from the Archive

• Mina Loy, “Love Songs” (6-8 in the inaugural 1915 issue of Others)
• T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (in the June 1915 issue of Poetry)
• Some Imagist Poets: An Anthology “Preface” (v – viii) and all excerpts from H.D.
• Catholic Anthology 1914-15, excerpts from Pound (86-89)

Historical Poetics and Manifestos 

• Mina Loy: Feminist Manifesto
• Ezra Pound: Review of Others from The Little Review (1918) (56-58); “Imagisme” and “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” from Poetry (March 1913); and “Vortex” from Blast 1 (153-154)
• T.S. Eliot: “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919)
• W.B. Yeats: “The Symbolism of Poetry,” from Ideas of Good and Evil (1902)

Contemporary Critical Readings: 

• Korg, Jacob. “Imagism.” A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry, edited by Neil Roberts, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 127-137.
• Golding, Alan. “Experimental Modernisms.” Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry, edited by Walter Kalaidjian, 2015, Cambridge UP, pp. 37-49
• Gelpi, Albert. “Introduction” to A Coherent Splendor, Cambridge UP, 1987, pp. 1-7.
• Peter Nichols. “The Poetics of Modernism.” Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry, edited by Alex Davis and Lee M. Jenkins, Cambridge UP, 2007, pp. 51-67

Assignments Due:

• Blog Post 1

Week 3: January 25—The Harlem Renaissance and the New Black Experience

Readings:

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006) unless otherwise noted

• Angela Weld Grimke: All excerpts (272-273)
• Claude McKay: All excerpts (382-384) and “The Lynching“
• Jean Toomer: All excerpts  (409-411) and “Portrait in Georgia“
• Sterling Brown: All excerpts (456-459) and “Southern Road,” and “Ma Rainey“
• Langston Hughes: All excerpts (468-475) and “Theme for English B,”I, Too,” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers, and “Po Boy Blues,” “Hard Daddy“
• Countee Cullen: All excerpts (477-478)

Historical Documents & Essays

• From W.E.B DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
• Alaine Locke, “Introduction” to The New Negro (1925)
• Langston Hughes, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (1926) (under “Readings”)

Contemporary Critical Readings

• Cook, William W. “The New Negro Renaissance,” A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry, edited by Neil Roberts, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 138-152. (under “Readings”)
• Jones, Sharon Lynette. “The Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance, A Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry, edited by Alex Davis and Lee M. Jenkins, Cambridge UP, pp. 195-206
• Bernard, Emily. “The Renaissance and the Vogue,” The Cambridge Companion to the Harlem Renaissance, edited by George Hutchinson, Cambridge UP, 2007, pp. 28 – 40

Assignment Due:

• Blog Post 2

Week 4: February 1—The Objectivists

Readings

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006) and required supplemental readings

• Charles Reznikoff: all excerpts (401-403), poems in the February 1931 issue of Poetry Magazine, and supplemental readings
• Lorine Niedecker: all excerpts (481-487), poems in the February 1931 issue of Poetry Magazine, and supplemental readings
• Louis Zukofsky: all excerpts (487-490), poems in the February 1931 issue of Poetry Magazine, and supplemental readings
• George Oppen: all excerpts (526-529), poems in the February 1931 issue of Poetry Magazine, and supplemental readings
• Carl Rakosi: poems in the February 1931 issue of Poetry Magazine

Historical Poetics and Archive

• Louis Zukofsky, “Sincerity and Objectivity” from the February 1931 issue of Poetry Magazine
• Louis Zukofsky, “A Statement for Poetry” and “Influence”
• George Oppen, “The Mind’s OwnPlace.”

Contemporary Critical Readings

• Duplessis, Rachel Blau. “Objectivist Poetry and Poetics.” Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry, edited by Walter Kalaidjian, 2015, Cambridge UP, pp. 89-10
• Scroggins, Mark. “The Objectivists and the Left.” The Cambridge History of American Poetry, edited by Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt, 2016, Cambridge UP, pp. 728-749
• Nicholls, Peter. “Of Being Ethical: Reflections on George Oppen.” The Objectivist Nexus: Essays in Cultural Poetics, edited by Rachel Blau DuPlessis and Peter Quartermain, University of Alabama Press, 1999, pp. 240-253.

Assignments Due:

• Blog Post 3

Week 5: February 8—The New American Poetry 1: Beats and Black Mountain

Readings:

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006) unless otherwise noted

• Charles Olson: “The Kingfishers” (539) and supplemental readings: “In Cold Hell, in Thicket,” “I, Maximus of Gloucster, to our,” “Letter,” “Maximus, to himself,” “Pacific Lament,” “The Thing was Moving.”
• Denise Levertov: supplemental readings (“Pleasures,” “The Dog of Art,” “Song for Ishtar,” “The Ache of Marriage,” “September 1961,” “Olga Poems,” “A Time Past”)
• Robert Creeley: “I Keep to Myself Such Measures…” (749) and supplemental readings (“After Lorca,” “A Form of Women,” “The Rain,” “For Love,” “The Language,” “The Window,” “The World,” “Self-Portrait,” “What I Think”)
• Gary Snider: supplemental readings: “Above Pate Valley,” “Riprap,” “Burning the Small Dead,” “The Wile Edge,” “The Bath.”
• Larry Eigner: supplemental readings: “[trees green    the quiet sun],” “Wholes,” [“a temporary language],” [the sun solid],” “[out of the wind   and leaves],” “”June 19-September 9 90”
• Lawrence Ferlinghetti: supplemental readings (“In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See”)
• Allen Ginsberg: supplemental readings (“Howl,” “A Supermarket in California,”  “Sunflower Sutra,” “America,” from “Kaddish”)
• Anne Waldman: supplemental Readings (“Makeup on Empty Space”)
• Gregory Corso: “The American Way,” supplemental Readings (“Italian Extravaganza,” “The Mad Yak,” “Last Night I rove a Car,” and “Dream of a Baseball Star.”

Historical Poetics

• Allen Ginsberg, “Notes on Finally Recording Howl” (under Readings)
• Charles Olson, “Projective Verse” (under Readings)
• Robert Creeley, “To Define” and “Form” (under Readings)
• Denise Levertov, “Some Notes on Organic Form” (under Readings)

Contemporary Critical Readings

• Johnson, Ronna. “Three Generations of Beat Poets.” Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, edited by Jennifer Ashton 2013, Oxford UP, pp. 80-94 (under Readings)
• Osborne, John. “Black Mountain and Projective Verse.” A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry, edited by Neil Roberts, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 168-182 (under Readings)
• Osborne, John. “The Beats.” A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry, edited by Neil Roberts, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 183-196 (under Readings)

Assignments Due:

• Blog Post 4

Week 6: February 15—The New American Poetry 2: San Francisco Renaissance and the New York School

Readings:

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006) unless otherwise noted

• Robert Duncan: “Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow” (645-646), “Poetry, a Natural Thing ” (646-647), “My Mother Would Be a Falconress” (647-649),  “The Torso” (649-651); “A Little Language” (link), “Passage Over Water” (link)
• Barbara Guest: “Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher” (661), “On the Verge of the Path” (662) “Words” (663), “Red Lillies” (link)
• Jack Spicer: “Improvisations on a Sentence by Poe” (725), “A Book of Music” (725), “Thing Language” (726), “Sporting Life” (726), “A Red Wheelbarrow” (726), “Song for the Bird and Myself” (under Readings), “The Book of Gawain” (97-100) (under Readings)
• Frank O’Hara: “Autobiographia Literaria” (786), “My Hear” (790), “A Step Away from Them” (790), Why I am Not a Painter” (791); “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island” (793), “The Day Lady Died” (795), “Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!) (797)
• John Ashbery: “How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher…” (806-809), “Decoy” (809), “The Instruction Manual” (804-806), “Soonest Mended” (810); “The One Thing that Can Save America” (823), “At North Farm” (825), “These Lacustrian Cities” (Link)
• Kennech Koch: “You Were Wearing” (711); “Permanently” (712), “The Railway Stationery” (712); “Variations on the Theme by William Carlow Williams” (714-715), “The Circus (1962)” (715-717)
• James Schuyler: “A White City” (689), “Things To Do (689), “Korean Mums” (690-691)

Historical Poetics

• Frank O’Hara: “Personism: A Manifest” and his poetics statement from The New American Poetry (1960) (under Readings)
• James Schuyler: “Poet and Painter Overture, from The New American Poetry (1960) (under Readings)
• Jack Spicer: “Letter to Lorca,” from The New American Poetry (1960) (under Readings)
• Robert Duncan: “Pages from a Notebook,” from The New American Poetry (1960) (under Readings)
• Barbara Guest: “A Reason for Poetics” (under Readings)

Contemporary Critical Readings

• Davidson, Michael. “The San Francisco Renaissance.” Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, edited by Jennifer Ashton, 2013, Oxford UP, pp. 66-79 (under Readings)
• Reed, Brian M. “The New York School.”The Cambridge History of American Poetry, edited by Alfred Bendixen and Stephen Burt, 2016, Cambridge UP, pp. 844-868

Assignments Due:

• Blog Post 5

Week 7: February 22—The Confessional Lyric

Readings

From The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006) unless otherwise noted

• Theodore Roethke: “My Papa’s Waltz” (530), “The Waking” (536), I Knew a Woman” (537), “In a Dark Time” (538)
• John Berryman: “1 (Huffy Henry…)” and excerpts from Dream Songs (604-608)
• Anne Sexton: “Wanting to Die” (855-856) and supplementary selection:”Her Kind,” “The Truth and Dead Know,” “All My Pretty Ones,” “The Starry Night,” “The Death of Fathers–2. How we Danced,” “The Death Baby–1. Dreams,” and “The Room of My Life” (under Readings)
• Sylvia Plath: “The Hanging Man” (886), “Mirror” (887), “The Applicant” (887-88), “Lady Lazarus” (888-891), “Elm” (891), “Daddy” (892-894), “Fever 103” (895), “Edge” (897), and “Poppies in October” (898)
• W.D. Snodgrass: “April Inventory” 798, “Mementos, 1” (799-800)
• Robert Lowell: “Memories of West Street and Lepke” (631), ‘Skunk Hour” (632), “Night Sweat” (633), “For the Union Dead” (634), “Fall 1961” (636), “Waking Early Sunday Morning” (637), “Dolphin” (639)
• Adrienne Rich: “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” (871), “Diving into the Wreck” (872-874), “Planetarium” (LINK)

Historical Poetics

• Robert Lowell: “Arial”
• Adrienne Rich: “When We Dead Awaken”

Contemporary Critical Readings

• Nelson, Deborah, “Confessional Poetry.” Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, edited by Jennifer Ashton, 2013, Oxford UP, pp. 31-46 (under Readings)
• Collins, Lucy. “Confessionalism.” A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry, edited by Neil Roberts, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 297-208 (under Readings)
• Thurston, Michael. “Psychotherapy and Confessional Poetry.” Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry, edited by Walter Kalaidjian, 2015, Cambridge UP, pp. 143-154 (under Readings)

Assignments Due:

• Blog Post 6

Week 8: March 1— Black Arts

Readings:

Poetry: All excerpts from Angles of Ascent (2013)

• All excerpts from Angles of Ascent–selections all focusing on historical Black Arts poetry (under Readings)

Historical Poetics

• Larry Neal, “And Shine Swam On,” Afterword to Black Fire (under Readings)
• James T. Stewart, “The Development of the Black Revolutionary Artist,” from Black Fire (under Readings)
• Major, Clarence, editor’s introduction to The New Black Poetry  (under Readings)

Contemporary Critical Readings

• Crawford, Margo Natalie.  “The Poetics of Change and Inner/Outer Space: The Black Arts Movement. Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, edited by Jennifer Ashton, 2013, Oxford UP, pp. 94-107.  (under Readings)
• Shockley, Evie. “The Black Arts Movement and Black Aesthetics.” Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry, edited by Walter Kalaidjian, 2015, Cambridge UP, pp. 180-195.  (under Readings)
• Smethurst, James Edward. “Foreground and Underground : the Left, Nationalism, and the Origins of the Black Arts Matrix,” in The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 60s and 70s. University of North Carolina Press, 2005.  (under Readings)

Assignments Due:

• Blog Post 7
• Please be prepared to informally discuss ideas for the final project with the class

Week 9: March 8—SPRING BREAK

Week 10: March 15—Language Poetry

Readings:

Poetry

• Michael Palmer, “Notes for Echo Lake 3,” “The Project of Linear Inquiry,” “Voice and Address,” “I Do Not,” and “Autobiography 2 (hellogoodbye)” (under Readings)
• Rae Armantrout, “Close,” “Empty,” “Anti-Short Story,” “Tone,” “You Float”(under Readings)
• Lyn Hejinian, “[the inanimate are rocks],” excerpts from My Life, excerpts from Writing as an Aid to Memory” (under Readings)
• Ron Silliman, excertps from The Chinese Notebook, excerpts from Tjanting (under Readings)
• Bob Perelman, “Chronic Meanings,” “Confession,” “An Autobiography,” “My One Voice,” “God” (under Readings)
• Charles Bernstein, “The Klupzy Girl,” “A Defense of Poetry,” “This Line,” “Castor Oil” (under Readings)

Historical Poetics

• Ron Silliman, “The New Sentence” (under Readings)
• Charles Bernstein, from “Artifice of Absorption” and “Introjective Verse” (under Readings)
• Rae Armantrout, “Why Don’t Women Do Language-Oriented Writing” (under Readings)
• Lyn Hejinian, “Against Closure” (under Readings)

Contemporary Critical Readings

• McCaffery, Steve. “Language Writing.” Cambridge Companion to American Poetry Since 1945, edited by Jennifer Ashton, 2013, Oxford UP, pp. 143-155 (under Readings)
• Simon Perrill. “Language Writing.” A Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry, edited by Neil Roberts, Blackwell, 2001, pp. 220-231 (under Readings)

Assignments Due:

• Blog Post 8

Week 11: March 22— Conference Week

Assignments Due:

• Student-Choice Module Pitch due during conferences–an informal set of notes and ideas is fine for this.
• Preliminary reading list
• In place of class, we will hold one-on-one conferences to discuss student-module pitches and preliminary reading list. The list will reflect roughly half of what we might typically read in any given professor-led week.

Week 12: March 29—Communities of Influence: Whitman and his Heirs

Readings:

Poetry

• Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” sections 1-10 (Oxford Anthology, 84-91); “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (Oxford Anthology, 131-135); “Among the Multitude,” “To a Stranger,” “In Paths Undrodden,” “Going Somewhere,” “A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine” (Oxford and LINKED)
• Martin Espada, “Rain without Rain“
• George Oppen, “Myself I Sing“
• D.A. Powell, “Spring of Lilac,” “Cosmos Late Blooming” (under Readings)
• Robert Duncan, “Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar” sections 1 and 2 (linked)
• Langston Hughes, “I, Too,” and “A Negro Speaks of Rivers“
• Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California” (Oxford Anthology, 750)
• Michael Palmer, “Dear Walt” (under Readings)
• Sherman Alexie, “Defending Walt Whitman” (LINKED)
• Sharon Olds, “Nurse Whitman” (LNKED)
• Julianah Spahr, “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache” (LINKED)

Reflections on Whitman’s Influence

• Jack Spicer, “Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce” (under Readings)
• June Jordan, “Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us” (under Readings)
• Anton Vander Zee, “Whitman, Lately” (LINKED)

Contemporary Critical Readings

• Folsom, Ed. “Talking Back to Whitman: An Introduction,” Walt Whitman: The Measure of His Song, edited by Jim Perlman, Ed Folsom, and Dan Campion. Holy Cow Press, 1998, pp. 21-74. (under Readings)

Week 13: April 5—Mini Modules on the Familial Post-Confessional Lyric and Asian-American Poetry

Module 1–The Familial Lyric: Readings distributed via e-mail 

Assignments Due:

• Final Project Proposal posts are due the day of your module, and those not presenting a module should compose a post on one of the modules (or both) using the standard categories. These will be posts 9 and 10.

Week 14: April 12—2 student-choice mini-modules (reading TBA)

Readings:

• TBA

Assignments Due:

• Final Project Proposal posts  are due the day of your module, and those not presenting a module should compose a post on one of the modules (or both) using the standard categories. These will be posts 9 and 10.

Week 15: April 19—Workshop and discuss final project drafts, fill out course-instructor evaluations

Assignments Due:

• Upload complete Final Project drafts to the designated OAKS locker prior to class

***Final Projects are due in the designated OAKS Dropbox by Wednesday, April 26 at midnight***

Please ask if you need an extension