Schedule

• Course Introduction: fundamentals, policies, resources
• Core Concepts: Influence
• Whitman Documentary (intro)
• ClassWrap sign-up info

• Read: Whitman: “Song of Myself,” Sections 1-26 (188-226)

• Read: Whitman: “Song of Myself,” Sections 27-52 (226-247); Group 1: Inscriptions (165-170); Group 2, Inscriptions (171-175); Group 3, “Starting from Paumanok” (176-188); “Poem of the Proposition of Nakedness” (linked)
• Lecture: The idea of a literary canon, the myths of Whitman, and the evolution of Leaves of Grass (1855-1892).

• Read: Whitman: “I Sing the Body Electric” (250-58); “Facing West from California’s Shores” (266-67); “In Paths Untrodden” (268); “Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand” (270-71); “Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances” (274); “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (307-313); “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life” (394-396)
• Due: Blog1—this and all blog posts due Wed. by 8pm
• Due: ClassWrap1—Prof—this and all ClassWraps due Sat. by noon

• Read: Whitman: from Drum-Taps—“Eighteen Sixty-One” (418); “Beat! Beat! Drums!” (419-20); “The Artilleryman’s Vision” (450); “Reconciliation” (453); “Bivouac on a Mountain Side” (434); “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (459-467); “Turn O Libertad” (457); “To the Leaven’d Soil They Trod” (458). Also: “To a President” (410); “I Sit and Look Out” (411).
• Core Concepts: Elegy, Symbol
• Lecture: The Civil War, Whitman’s presence in the hospitals, and his prose reflections on the war

• Read: Whitman: “There Was a Child Went Forth” (138-139); “This Compost” (495); “Warble for Lilac Time” (505)”; “So Long” (609-610); “A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine” (614); “A Font of Type” (614); “As I Sit Writing Here (614); “Out of May’s Shows Selected” (617); “Halcyon Days” (617); “Continuities” (626); “Yonnonido” (627); “‘Going Somewhere’” (627); “Dismantled Ship” (633); “Preface Note to 2d Annex” (637-38); “Mirages” (652); “Good-Bye My Fancy” (654)
• Due: Blog2—Due Wed. by 8pm
• Due: ClassWrap2—Due Sat. by Noon.

• Read: Ezra Pound: “Pact” (VW 166); Hart Crane: The Bridge, focusing on “Cape Hatteras” (CW)”; W.C. Williams: “The Red Wheelbarrow”; “To Elsie”; “Spring and All” (CW); T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land (CW); E.A. Robinson: “Walt Whitman” (VW 167).
• Core Concepts: Modernism
• Lecture: Whitman Before the Second World War

• Read: Michael Gold: “Ode to Walt Whitman”; Stephen Vincent Benet: “Ode to Walt Whitman (CW);  (CW); Carl Sandburg: selected (CW).
• Pop Culture: Whitman, the Worker, and Levis Jeans
• Due: Blog3
• Due: classWrap3
• Module on Whitman, the Worker, and Levi’s

• Read: Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (23), “Negro” (24); “Young Prostitute” (33); “I, Too” (46); “Let America Be America Again” (189) Old Walt” (446) “Return to Sea” (571), Montage of a Dream Deferred (387-429); Jean Toomer:  “Prayer,” and “Harvest Song” (CW).
• Core Concepts: The Harlem Renaissance
• Lecture: Whitman and Other Voices

• Read: Toi Derricotte: “Whitman, Come Again to the Cities” (VW 35); Calvin Forbes: “Reading Walt Whitman” (VW 63);  Yusef Komunyakaa: (VW 120-22); June Jordan: “For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us”; Margaret Walker: “Southern Song” (CW); Claudia Rankine: “American Light” (CW).
• Due: Blog4
• Due: classWrap4

• Read: Pablo Neruda: “Ode to Whitman” (VW 157-161); “We Live in a Whitmanesque Age” (CW); From The Essential Neruda: “Body of Woman” (3); “I can write the saddest verses” (9-11); “Oneness” (17); “Only Death” (33); “Ode with Lament” (47); “I Explain Some Things” (63); “Powerful Death” (71-72); “Rise up and be born with me” (91-93); “El Fugitivo XII: To everyone, to you” (99-101); “Ode to the Book” (115-21); “Poet’s Obligation” (145-47); “The People” (157-65); “Insomnia” (183); “Winter Garden” (197-99).
• Core Concepts: Transnational
• Lecture: Whitman, Neruda, and The Poet of the Americas

• Read: Federico Garcia Lorca: “Ode to Walt Whitman” (VW 134-138); Jorge Luis Borges: “Camden, 1892” (VW 18); Ezequiel Martinez Estrada:  “Walt Whitman” (CW); Martin Espada: “Another Nameless Prostitute Says the Man Is Innocent (VW 55-56), “The Republic of Poetry” and “Rain Without Rain (CW); Rudolpho Anaya, “Walt Whitman Strides the Llano of New Mexico” (CW)
• Due: Blog5
• Due: classWrap5

• Read: From Howl and Other Poems: Allen Ginsberg: “Howl” (9-26), “A Supermarket in California” (29-30), “Sunflower Sutra” (35-38); “America” (39-43).  Also, “I Love Old Whitman So” (VW 70).
• Core Concepts: Postmodernism; the “Tranquilized ‘50s”
• Lecture: Whitman’s Second Coming

• Read: Continue to look at “Howl”
• Due: Blog6
• Due: classWrap6

Go Forth!

• Read: Frank O’Hara (all CW): “To the Film Industry in Crisis,” “A Step Away from Them,” “Failures of Spring,” “Ode to Joy,” “Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets,” “How to Get There,” “Poem [I to you and you to me],” “Personism: a Manifesto”; Robert Duncan: “Poem Beginning with a Line from Pindar” (CW); Jack Spicer: “Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce” (CW).
• Handout: Final Research-Based Paper Assignment Sheet
• Due: Blog7
• Due: ClassWrap7

• Read:  George Oppen: Introduction (ix-xvi); “The Knowledge Not of Sorrow, You Were” (3); “The Edge of the Ocean” (4); “Eclogue” (7); “Image of the Engine” (8-11); “Myself I Sing” (20); “The Crowded Countries of the Bomb” (27); “World, World—” (80); “Of Being Numerous” (83-110);
• Core Concepts: Objectivist Poetics
• Lecture: Till Human Voices Wake Us Or We Drown

• Read: Louis Simpson: “Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain” (VW 183-84); John Berryman: “Despair” (VW 16)
• Read: Articles TBA
• Discuss Literary Research: The Web and Beyond
• Due: Blog8
• Due: Classwrap8

• Read Poems: Simon Ortiz: selections from From Sand Creek; Sherman Alexie: “Defending Walt Whitman” (VW 1-2); Bruce Cutler: “February 12, 1865” (VW 32).
• Read Articles: Maurice Kenny, “Whitman’s Indifference to the Indians”; James Nolan, Introduction to Poet-Chief; Joseph Bruchac, “To Love the Earth: Some Thoughts on Walt Whitman.”
• Lecture: Whitman, the New World, and Native America

• Read: Sharon Olds: “Nurse Whitman” (VW 162); Erica Jong: “Testament (Or, Homage to Walt Whitman)” (VW 114-118); Anne Waldman: “On Walt Whitman’s Birthday” (VW 210).  Also, article TBA
• Due: Blog9
• Due: classWrap9

• Read: Juliana Spahr: This Connection of Everyone with Lungs

• Read: C.K. Williams: “United States”; Whitman: “Dismantled Ship.”
• Essay: TBA
• Due: Blog10
• Due: ClassWrap 10

• In-Class Exam—Blue Book (yes, old school)

• Research Workshop–Meet in Addlestone Library
• Read the first section of Michael Cunningham: Specimen Days, “In the Machine”
• Due: Blog11—BONUS
• Due: ClassWrap11

• Read: the middle section of Specimen Days, “The Children’s Crusade”
• Due: Proposals + Descriptive Bibliography: bring a hard copy to class, and send me a copy via e-mail.
• In Class: Proposal Workshop–what to look for

• Read: Final section of Specimen Days, “Like Beauty”
• Due: Blog 12–BONUS (feel free to post your proposal)
• Due: ClassWrap12

• Research Consultation /  Conference Day
• Bonus Blog—Top Source (critical summary)

Go Forth!

• Finish discussion of Specimen Days.
• Peer Group Workshop, bring in your working draft, 5 page minimum

• Read a favorite Whitman poem, a Whitman-inspired poem, or a creative work of your own.
• Bonus Blog: post a section of your paper

[DUE: Sunday, Dec 5 by midnight, e-mail me your Final Paper]