TO MOVE QUICKLY THROUGH THE SYLLABUS CLICK ON ANY OF THE FOLLOWING TOPICS:
Meeting Times: MWF 1:10-2:00 Library 41
Office Hours: T.B.A.
Office: CC307 x7329
Laura's E-mail: Laura.Arnold@Reed.edu Class blitzmail: Eng213
Maria and Jennifer Gillan, eds. Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary
Multicultural Poetry
Paul Lauter, ed. Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2 (2nd ed.)
L. Arnold, ed. Course Reader (available in bookstore)
Vikram Seth Golden Gate
Alex Preminger and TVF Brogan, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
eds. (Recommended)
Paul Lauter, ed. (Recommended) Heath Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 1 (2nd ed.)
The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the complexity and pleasure of poetry. We will be learning about the aesthetics of ethnic American poetry by reading it in the context of Western and non-Western poetic traditions. We will use the historical circumstances and theories of ethnicity to help us understand the political choices behind poetic allusions, language, genre, diction, rhythm, and figurative language. The poems we read are chosen from a variety of genres, authors, and historical periods, ranging from sonnets to blues, John Keats to Sherman Alexie, and the Renaissance to the present. Our aim will be to understand how the various techniques and genres open to poets enable them to produce works of art which speak to us and push us to think. The course emphasizes close reading of the texts, and there will be frequent writing assignments.
Since a primary goal of this class is to help you to read, write, and speak about poetry, we will be engaging in variety of types of writing and commenting. You will be evaluated on how well you fulfill the following requirements:
*Attend, prepare for, and participate in conference
*Participate in weekly group discussion. Groups (3-4 people) will meet once a week outside of class to discuss a poem of their choosing. Discussion leaders will rotate and will post a one paragraph informal summary of the discussion on the course web page no later than 3 days after the group has met.
*Lead one class discussion. For this day you will be asked to write a one to two page reader response that contains 1) a critique of the article for that day and 2) a brief analysis of one of the day's poems using that article. This essay needs to be placed in course folder at least 24 hours before class, and all members of the class should have read it ahead of time.
*Write three papers besides the discussion paper. For descriptions of all of the papers see the final page of the syllabus.
*For other than the discussion leader paper, give peer response to members of group on the content and/or style of their essay.
*Journal assignments will occasionally be assigned.*NOTE: You may turn in one paper up to one week late (except the reader response for the day you are leading discussion), but all other work must be turned in on time for full credit. Please choose your extension wisely.
Please note: all essays are on reserve unless otherwise indicated
Week 1: Poetry, Ethnicity, and Aesthetics
W 9/3 Introduction The Power of Poetry
Elizabeth Bishop, "Questions of Travel" (Handout)
F 9/5 What is poetry and how does it ask to be read?
Handout: defining poetry (on-line)
Poems: Lorde, "Power" (Heath 2: 2938); Cervantes, "Poem for the Young White Man..." (Heath 2: 3101)
Essays/Prose: Peter Morrison and Ira Lowry, "A Riot of Color: The Demographic Setting" (Los Angeles Riots, ed. Mark Baldassare , pp. 19-46; on reserve)
Poems: Safiya Henderson-Holmes, "Failure of an Invention" (Unsettling America 60)
Aurora Morales, "Child of the Americas" (Heath 2: 2814)
Essay: Sollors, The Invention of Ethnicity (pp. ix-xx, 226-235 )
Week 2/3 "Who's Talking and Why"? Speaker & Diction
W 9/10 Point of View: Reclaiming the Master's Tools--Persona
Poems: Wheatley, "On Being Brought from Africa to America," "Phillis' Reply..." (Reader)
Dunbar, "Sympathy" (Heath 2: 501)
Essay: Fanon, "The Negro and Language" (Black Skin, White Masks, 17-40)
F 9/12 Point of View: Reclaiming the Master's Tools--Narrative
Poems: "Go Down, Moses," "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel" (Heath 1: 2690-92)
Essay: DuBois, "Sorrow Songs" (on-line or Heath 2: 1025); reread Exodus; Daniel (or see the summary of Daniel)
S 9/13 PAPER #1 Due (see end of syllabus)
DISCUSSION GROUPS--What is Poetry?
M 9/15 Point of View: Standing in the Master's Shoes
Poem: Elizabeth Alexander, "Venus Hottentot" (Reader)
Essay: Sander Gilman, "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward an
Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature," "Race," Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (232-61 ; On Reserve)
Week 3/4 Reforming and Performing Traditional Genres
W 9/17 Sonnets: Form & Preservation
Poems: Spenser, from Amoretti "LXXV (One day I wrote)" (Also in Reader)
Henrietta Cordelia Ray, "To My Father" (Reader)
Dunbar, "Douglass" (Heath 2: 494-96)
Sonnets on Immortality:
Shakespeare, "XVIII (Shall I compare thee...)," "XIX Devouring Time..."; Shelley, "Ozymandias" (Also in your Reader)
Poems on Immortality:
Rilke, "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes" (tr. Stephen Mitchell)
Rilke, "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes" (tr. J.B. Leishman)
Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (tr. Stephen Mitchell)
H.D. "Eurydice" (selection from the full text of the poem)
Ovid, The Orpheus and Eurydice Episode (Latin with notes and translations)
Essay: Barbara Smith, "Introduction" (Poetic Closure 1-37)
Also consult Abrams and the Princeton Encyclopedia on the sonnet.
On-line historical anthology of the sonnet (includes handouts for today).
F 9/19 Sonnets and Sound (introduction to scansion)
Same poems as previous day
Essay: Stephen Adams, "Meter and Rhythm" (Poetics Deigns: pp. 1-36)
Stauder, "Summary of Prosodic Rules" (Reader)
S 9/20 PEER RESPONSE TO PAPER #1 DUE
M 9/22 Sonnets (scansion take 2): Form and Gender
Handout: Petrarchan Conventions & the Sonnet
Poems: Henrietta Cordelia Ray, "To Laura" (Reader)
Helene Johnson, "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem" (Reader)
Background Poems:
Petrarch, Sonnets (Handout)
Wyatt, "Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbor" (Reader)
Surrey, "Love That Doth Reign" (Reader)
Sidney, "Loving in Truth" (Reader)
Essays: Marcellus Blount, "Caged Birds: Race and Gender in the Sonnet" (Engendering Men 255-38)
(Optional: Ann Rosalind Jones, "Assimilation with a Difference: Renaissance Women Poets and Literary Influence")
W 9/24 Sonnets (scansion take 3): Form and Optimism
Poems: Countee Cullen, "Yet I Do Marvel" (Heath 2: 1646)
John Donne, "Holy Sonnet XIV (Batter my heart...)" (Reader)
Milton, "When I Consider How My Light is Spent" (Reader)
Essays: Heninger, "The Origin of the Sonnet: Form as Optimism" (The Subtext of Form 69-118)
F 9/26 Elegies (scansion take 4)
Poems: Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Mother" (Heath 2: 2279)
Colleen McElroy, "It Ain't Blues That Blows an Ill Wind" (Reader)
Anne Sexton, "The Abortion" (Reader)
Essay: Peter Sacks, "Interpreting the Genre: The Elegy and the Work of Mourning,"
(The English Elegy 1-37)
M 9/29 Blues: Langston Hughes and New Blues Aesthetic
Poems: "Blues Lyrics" (Heath 2: 1722-28)
Langston Hughes, "The Weary Blues" (Heath 2: 1614)
Sterling Brown, "When de Saints Go Ma'ching Home" (Heath 2: 1658)
Essays: Steven Tracy, Langston Hughes & the Blues (Chapter 3, at least pp. 141-82; rest of chapter recommended)
W 10/1 Blues cont. : Women and the Blues
Poems: Gwendolyn Brooks, "Queen of the Blues" (Reader)
Sandra McPherson, "Bad Mother Blues" (Reader)
Colleen McElroy, "It Ain't Blues That Blows an Ill Wind" (Reader)
Blues Lyrics & Women (Reader)
Essays: Michele Russell, "Slave Codes & Liner Notes" (All the Women are White...But Some of Us Are Brave 129-40)
Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" (Claims for Poetry 459-68)
F 10/3 New Meters (Free Verse Take 1):
Poems: Audre Lorde, "Stations" (Heath 2: 2943)
Essex Hemphill, "An American Wedding" (Reader)
Essays: Robert Hass, "Listening and Making" (Twentieth Century Pleasures 107-33)
Annie Finch, "Contemporary Free Verse" (The Ghost of Meter 129-40)
Journal: Sharon Bryan "Free Verse Lineation" (The Practice of Poetry 181-183
Week 6: Borderlands: Indigenismo
M 10/6 Imagined Communities Aztlán and Indigenismo
Poems: Anzaldúa, "Wind tugging at my sleeve" (Borderlands 1-2: Reader)
Zamora, "On Living in Aztlan" (Heath 2: 2951)
Essays: Anzaldúa, "The Homeland, Aztlán" (Reader)
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (1-36 in the 1991 edition; or 11-40 1983 edition)
W 10/8 Poetics of Aztlán; Colonial and Pre-colonial
Poems: Aztec Poems & Sorrow Songs (Reader)
Alarcón, Francisco, "Holocaust" (Reader)
Essay: William Gingerich, "Heidegger and the Aztecs: The Poetics of Knowing in Pre- Hispanic Nahuatl Poetry" (Recovering the Word, ed. Brian Swann, 85- 112)
Anzaldúa, "Tlilli, Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink" (Borderlands 65-75)
F 10/10 Poetics of Aztlán: Post-colonial
Poems: Bernice Zamora, "Restless Serpents" (Heath 2: 2950)
Francisco Alarcón, "Tonantzin" (Reader)
Essay: Anzaldúa, "Entering the Serpent" (Borderlands 25-40) and Donald Davidson, "What Metaphors Mean" (On Metaphor, ed. Sacks 29-46)
Week 7: The Form of the Border
M 10/13 Chicano Aesthetics & Corridos
Poems: Corridos (Heath 2: 828-44)
Border Ballads: "The Dying Ranger" (Reader)
Essay: Amerigo Paredes, "The Corrido on the Border" (With a Pistol in His Hand 129- 50
W 10/15 New Oral Corridos, New Heroes
Poems: Corridos on JFK (Heath 2: 842-845)
XJ Kennedy, "Down in Dallas" (Reader)
F 10/17 New Literary Corridos
Poems: Corky Gonzales, "I am Joaquín" (Reader)
Essay: Curtis Márez, "The Politics of Working-Class Chicano Style" (On Reserve) Journal Exercise: Free Verse Lineation (on-line)
DRAFT PAPER #2 DUE
FALL BREAK 10/18-26
Week 8: Old Myths, New Stories: Forms and Free Verse
M 10/27 La Virgen
Poems: "La Madre de Dios" (Reader)
"La Magdalena" (Reader)
Essay/Fiction: Cisneros, "Little Miracles, Kept Promises," (Heath 2: 3116-25)
Folklore: "History of the Miraculous Apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1531" (Heath 1: 467)
T 10/28 PEER RESPONSE TO PAPER #2 DUE
W 10/29 La Llorona
Poems: Cordelia Candelaria, "Go 'Way from My Window, La Llorona (1)" (Reader)
Naomi Quiñonez, "La Llorona" (Reader)
Folklore: "La Llorona, Malinche, and the Unfaithful Maria" (Heath 1: 1282)
Essay: Monica Palacios, "La Llorona Loca: The Other Side" (Reader)
Richard Rodriguez, "Aria" (The Hunger of Memory 9-40)
F 10/31 La Malinche
Poems: Pat Mora, "Malinche's Tips: Pique from Mexico's Mother" (Reader)
Pat Mora, "Cortez's Horse" (Unsettling America 338-40)
Essay: Cordelia Candelaria, "La Malinche, Feminist Prototype" (On Reserve)
S 11/1 FINAL DRAFT PAPER #3 DUE
Week 9: Japanese American Poetry and Poetics
M 11/3 Japanese-American Origins of Free Verse : the Haiku
Poems: Traditional Haiku (Handout)
Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro" (Heath 2: 1261)
Essay: Pound, "A Retrospect" (Literary Essays of Ezra Pound 3-14)
Kenneth Yasuda, "An Approach to Haiku," "Basic Principles" (The Japanese Haiku 3-26)
W 11/5 Sansei Poetics
Poems: Ronald Tanaka, "Shido, or the Way of Poetry" (Reader)
Essay: Donald Wesling, "Narrative of Grammar in the Prose Poem," The New Poetries (172-200)
F 11/7 Poetics of Displacement
Poems: Dwight Okita, "Notes for a Poem on Being Asian American" (Unsettling America 256-57)
Janice Mirikitani, "Desert Flowers," "Breaking Tradition," "Recipe" (Heath 2: 3093-96
Essay: Shirley Lim, "Reconstructing Asian-American Poetry: A Case for Ethnopoetics" (On Reserve)
Week 10: Chinese American Poetry and Poetics
M 11/10 Aesthetics and Imagery
Poems: W.C. Williams, "Young Sycamore" (Heath 2: 1319)
Nellie Wong," On Thinking of Photographing My Fantasies" (Reader)
H.D. "Sea Rose" (Heath 2: 1381)
Essays: Wai-lim Yip, "Translating Chinese Poetry: The Convergence of Languages and Poetics" (Chinese Poetry 1-27)
W 11/12 Bi-cultural Genres
Poem: Marilyn Chin, "We Are Americans Now" (Unsettling America 10)
Essay: Stephen Own, "An Uncreated Universe: Cosmogony, Concepts, and Couplets" (Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics 78-107)
PEPP (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics) entry on Couplets
F 11/14 The Aesthetics of Mourning
Poems: Li-Young Lee, "I Ask My Mother to Sing" (Unsettling America 303)
Li-Young Lee, "Visions and Interpretations" (Reader)
Essay: Ch'ien Chung-Shu, "Poetry as a Vehicle of Grief" (A Brotherhood in Song: Chinese Poetry and Poetics, ed. Soong 21-40)
Gerald Stern, "Forward" to Li Young Lee's Rose (Reader)
Week 11: Indian American Poetry and Poetics
M 11/17 Indian American Epics
Poems: Vikram Seth, Golden Gate
Essay: Stuart Blackburn, "Patterns of Development for Indian Oral Epics" (Oral Epics in India, Blackburn et al. eds., pp. 15-32)
John D, Smith, "Scapegoats of the Gods, The Ideology of the Indian Epics(Oral Epics in India, Blackburn et al. eds., pp. 176-94)
Also read the entry in PEPP on Epics
W 11/19 American Indian Epics
Poems: Seth, Golden Gate
Hart Crane, The Bridge (Heath 2: 1571-77)
Essays: Trachtenberg, "Cultural Revision in the Twenties: Brooklyn Bridge as 'Usable Past'" (The American Self, ed. Girus 58-75)
Alexander, "Piecemeal Shelters" (Reader)
F 11/21 What is Native American Poetry? Oral Style and Ethnicity
Poems: Three Versions of the "Chant to the Fire-Fly" (Reader)
Essays: Michael Castro, "Early Translators of Indian Poetry" (Interpreting the Indian 3-46)
Week 12/13: Oral Style and Narrative Cycles
M 11/24 Reading Religious Verse: the power of language
Poems: Keats, "The Fall of Hyperion" (Handout)
Ghost Dance Songs (Heath 2: 761-63)
Essay: Karl Kroeber, "Poem, Dream, and the Consuming of Culture" (Smoothing the Ground, ed. Brain Swann: 323-33)
W 11/26 Creation Stories
Poems: Silko, "Long time ago [The Creation of the Whites]" (Reader)
Essay: Andrew Wiget, "Native American Oral Literatures" (Heath 1: 21-27)
Oral Tradition: Pueblo Origin Stories (on-line)
ABSTRACT for FINAL PAPER DUE
F 11/28 THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
M 12/1 Trickster Cycles & Humor
Poems: Fonseca, "Coyote" (Reader)
Ortiz, "The Creation, According to Coyote" (Reader)
Essay: Ken Lincoln, "Old Tricks, New Twists" (Indi'n Humor 120-70)
Oral Tradition: Coyote Stories (Heath 2:1931-36 and in IMC)
Journal Exercise: Free Verse Lineation (on-line)
W 12/3 Migration Legends & Travel Poems
Poems: Louise Erdrich, "Indian Boarding School: The Runaways" (Unsettling America 26-27)
Luci Tapahonso, "I am Singing Now" (Unsettling America 352-53)
Essay: Wayne Booth, "Metaphor as Rhetoric" (On Metaphor, 47-70)
Erdrich, "Where I Ought to Be" (Reader)
Oral Tradition: Migration Stories:
Luci Tapahonso is a Navajo Indian (i.e. from the Southwest; the Navajo are one of the Pueblos neighbors). For an excellent summary of a very famous Navajo migration story (the Nightway Chant) featuring a "legendary figure of mythical proportions who move[s] about in recognizably historical settings" please see the following webpage (includes excellent reproductions of Navajo sandpaintings which accompany the story): http://www.canyonart.com/sandrugs.htm
For a contemporary travel narrative through Navajo land (including information on the Nightway Chant and audio tracks of Navajo words) see http://hanksville.phast.umass.edu/Day5.html#D5chant
Louise Erdrich is from the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa. If you look on the Chippewa homepage I have put together there are links to oral tradition and history. (http://academic.reed.edu/english/courses/English558/bingopalace.html)
For those with a general interest in American Indian religion and religious beliefs, you may find the following web page of interest: http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~jkh8x/soc257/nrms/naspirit.html
Week 13/14: Rethinking Forms and Traditions
F 12/5 Euro-American Forms
Poem: Posey, "Ode to Sequoyah" (Heath 2: 503-4)
Robert Hass, "English: An Ode" (Reader)
Essay: Paul Fry, "Introduction" The Poet's Calling In The English Ode (1-14; PR509.O3 F7 )
PEPP entry on Odes
S 12/6 DRAFT OF FINAL PAPER DUE
Poems: Sherman Alexie, Blues Lyrics (Reader)
Joy Harjo, "Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor " (Heath 2: 3050-52)
Joy Harjo, "New Orleans" (Heath 2: 3052-54)
Essay/Fiction: Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues (Reader)
W 12/10 Indian Haikus
Poems: Gerald Vizenor, "Seasons in Santa Fe" (Reader)
Gary Snyder, "Hitch Haiku" (Reader)
Essay: Leslie Marmon Silko, "Old Time Indian Attack" (Reader)
Gary Snyder, "The Politics of Ethnopoetics" (A Place in Space 126-47)
PEER RESPONSE TO FINAL PAPER DUE
FINAL: Tuesday Dec. 16, 9am-12 noon REVISED VERSION OF FINAL PAPER DUE
One of the chief aims of this course is to have you write frequently and in a variety of modes so that you are increasingly able to connect your thinking, feeling, and writing. Throughout the semester I will give you journal assignments which are designed to help you engage with the poetry in a creative and active manner (most journal assignments are listed on the syllabus). These assignments are always suggestions: you are free to substitute your own reactions to the readings. Similarly, if you are a poet (or merely adventuresome), you are free to substitute either a poem you have written along with a discussion of how it relates to the day's readings or a writing assignment from Robin Behn and Chase Twichell's The Practice of Poetry (on Reserve).
First Paper: Due by noon on Saturday Sept. 13 in my Eliot Hall Mailbox
Give your personal (and holistic?) definition of poetry. What makes something "poetry"? How do you distinguish poetry from other types of writing? Use at least one piece of writing that you consider essentially "poetic" to develop and illustrate your definition. Length: 1-2 pages. Post in Group Folder. Peer Responses Due 9/20.
Second Paper: Draft due by noon on Friday Oct. 17 in my Eliot Hall mailbox
Explicate a sonnet or an adapted sonnet. Your analysis should consider elements such as meter, figurative language, sound, diction, speaker, tone. (You will want to scan the poem). You will also want to analyze how the poem uses, resists, or transforms the conventions of the sonnet. When the poet deviates from our expectations, does (s)he enhance the meaning of the poem in any way? What sort of identity does the poet construct for the speaker? Please include a copy of the poem. Length: 3-5 pages. Post in Group Folder. Peer Responses Due 10/28. Final Draft Due 11/1.
Third Paper: Draft due by noon on Saturday Dec. 6 in my Eliot Hall Mailbox
The purpose of this paper is to give you the space to develop a reading of a poem written in a particular form or genre while directing your attention to the ways in which the poet uses the tradition associated with that form/genre &/or invents an ethnic identity. You may write on a poem we have discussed in class if you develop your discussion in new directions or use the class poem as a basis for comparison with a new one. You may also supplement the critical readings I have assigned with other materials from the library, but I am primarily interested in having you develop your own reading an analysis. Please use the MLA Handbook for proper footnote and bibliographic form. Abstract Due 11/26. Draft Due 12/6. Post in Group Folder. Peer Responses due 12/10. Final Draft due 12/16. Length: 6-8 pages.
Fourth Paper: due 24 hours before day you lead discussion. Post in class folder. The goal of this paper is to both to give your practice digesting critical arguments and to focus class discussion. The first half should include a brief synopsis of the argument of one of the critical articles assigned for the day you are leading discussion and your ideas on what makes the article useful and/or less useful. If you feel so inclined, you may comment on the style as well as content of the piece of prose. The second half should give an example of how one might apply the ideas of the article to one of the poems we are reading for the day you will be leading discussion. This is a relatively informal response: as long as your review contains the necessary information, you are free to experiment with your prose style. Length: 1-2 pages.