Schedule

• Making the Case: Prefaces, Manifestos, and Defining a Poetics

Readings Due:

• “Preface” to Leaves fo Grass (WW, 5-26)

• Selections from Spring and All (1922), William Carlos Williams (pages 176-185–LINK)
• William Carlos Williams bio (just skim through for background / context)
• “Notes Written on Finally recording Howl” (LINK)
• “Personism,” Frank O’Hara (LINK)
• Frank O’Hara Bio (skim through for background / context)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 1: Group 1 & 2

• Whitman and the American Self
• “Inscriptions”–Charting Whitman’s Range (in class)
• “Extending the Conversation” Presentation (Prof VZ–Whitman and Beyond)

Readings Due:

• “Song of Myself” (188-247)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 2: Group 1

• Whitman and the American Self

Reading Due:

• “I Sing the Body Electric” (WW 250-258)
• Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” (Audio–we will listen in class)
• George Oppen, “Myself I Sing” (LINK)
• Langston Hughes, “A Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “I, Too”  (LINK)
• Sherman Alexie, “Defending Walt Whitman” (VW)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 2: Group 2

• Whitman, Crisis, and Connection
• Robert Creeley Reading Whitman
• Kenneth Goldsmith reads Whitman, Crane, and excerpts from his conceptual poem Traffic

• Whitman and Critique: Poetry of Political Engagement

Reading Due:

• “A Boston Ballad (WW 404-406)
• “Poem of the Proposition of Nakedness” (LINK)
• “To the States” (WW 415)
• Excerpts from Democratic Vistas TBA (WW, 929-940)
• Michael Palmer, “A Letter” (CW–available under “Readings”)
• Allen Ginsberg, “America“
• Michael Gold, “Ode to Walt Whitman” (CW–available under “Readings”)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 3: Group 1

• Whitman as the World’s Poet: Focus on Spanish-Speaking Inheritance

Readings Due:

• “Introduction,” Walt Whitman and the World (LINK)–note that this entire book is available on the Whitman Archive linked in the navigation bar
• “Salut au Monde” (WW 287-297)
• Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Walt Whitman” (VW 157-161)
• Federico Garcia Lorca, “Ode to Walt Whitman” (VW 134-138)
• Neruda, “We Live in a Whitmanesque Age” (CW)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 4: Group 1

• Whitman and Others: Whitman’s Queer Children, Racial Identity, and Gender

Reading Due:

• Whitman, “In Paths Untrodden” (WW 268)
• Whitman, “Whoever You Are Holding me Now in Hand” (WW 270-272)
• June Jordan “For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us” (CW)
• Martin Espada, “How We Could Have Lived or Died This Way” (LINK)
• Yusef Komunyakaa, “Kosmos”  (VW 120-122)
• Mark Doty, “Letter to Walt Whitman” (39-49)
• Sharon Olds, “Nurse Whitman” (162)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 4: Group 2

• Whitman, War, Patriotism

Readings Due:

• Whitman, “Beat! Beat! Drums!” (WW 419-420)
• Whitman, “The Wound-Dresser” (WW 442-445)
• Dave Smith, “With Walt Whitman at Fredericksburg” (VW 187-188)
• Whitman, “Over the Carnage Rose a Prophetic Voice” (WW 449)
• Whitman, “The Artilleryman’s Vision” (*WW 450-451)
• Whitman, excerpts from Specimen Days “WW 745-753)
• W.S. Di Piero, “Walt, The Wounded (VW 36-38)
• Brian Turner, “At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center” (LINK) and “Phantom Noise” (LINK)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 5: Group 2

• Whitman and the National-Personal Elegy

Reading Due:

• Whitman, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (WW 459-467)
• Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!” (WW 467-468)
• Whitman, “This Compost” (495-497)
• Jack Spicer, “Some Notes on Whitman for Allen Joyce” (LINK)
• Martin Espada, Rain without Rain (LINK)
• Louis Simpson, “Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain” (VW 183)

Assignment Sheets:

Assignment Due:

• Blog 5: Group 1

• Whitman’s Spiritual Ascent

Readings Due:

• Whitman, “Preface, 1876” (1005 – 1014)
• Whitman, “Passage to India” (WW 531-540)
• Whitman, “Now Finale to the Shore” (WW 608)
• “Joy, Shipmate, Joy!” (WW 608)
• Whitman, “The Untold Want” (WW 608)
• Whitman, “Portals” (WW 608)
• Whitman, “These Carols” (WW 608)
• Whitman, “So Long!” (WW 609-612)
• Whitman, “Prayer of Columbus” (WW 540-542)
• Robert Duncan, “Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar” (just section II)
• Hart Crane, “Atlantis” (LINK), and also look back to Cape Hatteras, an earlier section from the same poem that prepares us for this “ascent”
• Richard Eberhart, “Centennial for Whitman” (VW 49)

Assignment Due:

• Optional Make-up Blog or Bonus

• Late Whitman and the Presence of Whitman’s Lateness 

Assignment Sheet:

• Final Project Intro Blog Post

Readings Due:

• Whitman, “Preface to 2d Annex” (WW 637-638)
• Whitman, “A Backward Glance O’Eer Travel’d Roads” (WW 656-672)
• “Whitman, “The Dismantled Ship” (WW 634)
• Whitman, “Going Somewhere” (WW 627)
• Whitman, “Continuities” (WW 626)
• Whitman, “To Get the Final Lilt of Songs” (WW 624)
• Whitman, “Out of May’s Shows Selected” (WW 617)
• Whitman, “A Carol Closing Sixty-Nine” (WW 614)
• Good-Bye my Fancy” (WW 639-640)
• Whitman, Mirages (WW 652)
• Robert Creeley, “Reflections on Whitman in Age” (LINK)
• D.A. Powell, “Good-bye My Fancy” (LINK)–also “Cosmos, late blooming” and “Sprig of Lilac (CW)
• Allen Ginsberg, “Personal Ad” (CW)
• C.K. Williams, “The United States” (CW)
• Robert Duncan, “After Long Illness” (CW)

Assignment Due:

• Optional Make-up Blog or Bonus

• Towards the Final Project

Assignment Due: 

• Blog 6–Final Project Intro Blog Post (post by dawn, comment by class)
• Sign up for pre-break conferences

• One-on-one conferences will take the place of the regularly scheduled class
• Sign up for pre-break conferences

Assignment Due: 

• Attend pre-break one-on-one conferences

• Whitman and the Novel

Readings Due: 

• 10:04, Ben Lerner (1-158)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 7: Group 1

• Whitman and the Novel

Readings Due: 

• 10:04, Ben Lerner (158 – 240)
• “The Dark Threw Patches on Me Also” (Ben Lerner)

Assignment Due:

• Blog 7: Group 2

• Whitman, Connection, Complicity, and the Natural World

Readings Due:

• This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, Juliana Spahr

Assignment Due:

• Blog 8: Group 2

• Whitman, Connection, Complicity, and the Natural World
• Final Project conversation

Readings Due:

• Excerpt from Well Then There Now, Juliana Spahr: “Gentle Now, Don’t Add to Heartache“
• Excerpt from That Winter the Wolf Came (2015): “Tradition“

• Whitman and the Autobiographical Self
• Assignment Sheet: Proposal & Final Project.

Readings Due:

• Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

Assignment Due:

• Blog 9: Group 1

• Whitman and What it Means to be a Citizen
• Class won’t meet (but please due blog) due to unexpected out-of-town travel

Readings Due:

• Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

Assignment Due:

• Blog 9: Group 2

• Library Workshop–Mentored research Day. Meet in rotunda of Addlestone Library.

• Proposal Workshop

Assignment Due:

• Formal Proposals Due

In Class

• Literature Review Presentations

Assignment Due: 

• Whether you are working on a digital project or a more traditional project, you will all assemble a research conversation surrounding your project. This presentation is a 10 minute over view of that conversation as it begins to unfold.

• Meet one-on-one Wednesday-Friday to discuss annotated bibliography (meetings take the place of regularly scheduled class)

Assignment Due:

• Annotated Bibliography due by as hard copy during one-on-one meetings.

• Monday’s and Thursday’s class will be replaced by individual conferences

Assignment Due: 

• Final Project Drafts due Sunday 4/17 by midnight

• Fill out course-instructor evaluations, senior survey, and conduct final peer-review session.