[Reed College] [Academic Life] [Course Materials]
Location: [Reed College] [Academic Life] [Course Materials] English 211: Poetry & Poetics
The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the complexity and pleasure of poetry. We will be reading a variety of genres and authors, from sonnets to blues and William Wordsworth to Leslie Marmon Silko. Our aim will always 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.
Since a primary goal of this course is to help you to read, write and speak about poetry, we will be doing a variety of types of writing and peer review. I will ask you to sign up to lead one class discussion. (Of course, I will still expect you to participate in class throughout the semester. ) 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. Each member of the class will also write a one to two page Poetry Creedo (due 9/16), a four to five page explication of a sonnet (due 10/18), and a six to eight page paper on a genre of your choice (due 12/9). For each of these papers, members of your peer response group will give you feedback on the content and style of your essay. In addition to these more formal papers, you will be asked to respond to the poems informally in journals throughout the semester. At the end of the quarter I will ask you to turn in a portfolio of the work of which you are proudest. This may include selected journals, some or all of your essays, and any other relevant material. You may revise any or all of your papers for the portfolio. 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.)
Note: All Essays are on Reserve unless otherwise indicated.
PIE refers to the Rosenthal anthology.
Week 1: What is Poetry?
T 9/3 Introduction Poems: Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (Handout)
R 9/5 What Makes a Poem a Poem?
Poems: John Montague, "Trout" (PIE 1095)James Wright, "A Blessing" (PIE 1066)
Handouts: Trout Literature, What is Poetry?
Essays: Andrew Welsh, "Coordinates" (Roots of Lyric 3-24)
Dana Gioia, "Can Poetry Matter?" (Can Poetry Matter? 1-24)
Journal: Types of Language
Week 2: Speaker & Diction
T 9/10
Poems: William Collins, "Ode to Evening" (PIE 438)William Wordsworth, "Strange Fits of Passion,"(PIE 511)
Gloria Anzaldúa, "Cultures," "sus plumas el viento" (Reader)
Seamus Heaney, "Digging" (Reader)
Essays: Wordsworth, "Preface to the Lyrical Ballads" (Norton Anthology of English Literature vol. 2 157-70)
Gloria Anzaldúa, "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," "Tlilli, Tlapalli: The Path of the Red and Black Ink" Borderlands (53-75)
To see the Lyrical Ballads and many other poems on line click [here]
Journal: Diction (Rewriting Poems)
R 9/12
Poems: Ovid, "Orpheus" (Reader)H.D., "Eurydice" (Reader)
Mina Loy, "Oh hell" (Reader)
To read Rilke's "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes" click here
Essays: Pound, "A Retrospect" (Literary Essays of Ezra Pound 3-14)
Journal: The Importance of Words
Week 3: Figurative Language
M 9/16 Paper #1 Due: Credo (1-2 pp.)
T 9/17
Poems: Andrew Marvell, "The Garden" (PIE, 318)
Essays: Thomas McLaughlin, "Figurative Language" (Critical Terms for Literary Study 80-90)
Donald Davidson, "What Metaphors Mean" (On Metaphor , ed. Sacks 29-46)
Wayne Booth, "Metaphor as Rhetoric" (On Metaphor, 47-70)
R 9/19
Poems: P.G. Allen, "Dear World" (Handout)Leslie Marmon Silko, "This is the way Aunt Susie," "Poem for Myself and Mei: Concerning Abortion" (Storyteller 7-15, 122-23: On Reserve)
Wright, "A Blessing"(PIE 1066: reread)
To gain access to poetry by more American Indian authors click [here]
NOTE: If you click on "Leslie Marmon Silko" above you will see photos taken by her father Lee Marmon, a Laguna Pueblo Artist
Essays: Robert Bly, "What the Image Can Do" (Claims for Poetry 38-49)
Also Continue Above
Journal: Making Metaphors (Mitchell, The Practice of Poetry 46-47)
Week 4: Sonnets
T 9/24 Introduction
Poems: Wyatt, "Long Love That in My Thought Doth Harbor" (PIE 130)Surrey, "Love That Doth Reign" (PIE133)
Sidney, "Loving in Truth" (PIE 141-42)
Essays: Barbara Smith, "Introduction" (Poetic Closure 1-37)
Cruttwell, Patrick, The English Sonnet
Also consult Abrams and the Princeton Encyclopedia on the sonnet.
R 9/26 The Myth of the Poet
Poems: Shakespeare, "XVIII (Shall I compare thee...)," "XIX Devouring Time..." (PIE 195, 196)Spenser, from Amoretti "LXXV (One day I wrote)" (PIE 155)
Shelley, "Ozymandias" (PIE 578)
Essay: Barbara Smith, "Formal Structure and Closure" (Poetic Closure 38-56)
To find out about criticism on Shakespeare's Sonnets click here
Journal/Handout: Howard Moss's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?"
Weeks 5 & 6: Musical Matters: The Sound, Rhythm, and Line of the Sonnet
T 10/1 Rhythm & Meter
Poems: Sidney and Shakespeare from aboveSidney, "Sonnet XXI " (PIE 142)
Essays: Versification essay in anthology (PIE 1138-90)
"Summary of Prosodic Rules" (Reader)
Donald Justice. "Meters and Memory" (Claims for Poetry 196-202)
R 10/3 A Religious Beat
Poems: John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV (Batter my heart...)" (PIE 240)Milton, "When I Consider How My Light is Spent" (PIE 281)
Essays: Heninger, "The Origin of the Sonnet: Form as Optimism" (The Subtext of Form 69-118)
T 10/8 Updating the Sound and Form of the Sonnet
Poems, Wilfred Owen, "Dulce et Decorum Est' (PIE 914)
Essays: Dacey & Jauss, "Introduction" Strong Measures 1-16
Robert Hass, "One Body: Some Notes on Form" (Twentieth Century Pleasures 56-71)
R 10/10 Caged Birds: Race and Gender in the Sonnet
Poems: Dunbar, "Sympathy," "Douglass" (Reader)Helene Johnson, "Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem" (Reader)
Henrietta Cordelia Ray, "To My Father" (Reader)
Dalton, "A History of a Poetic" (Reader)
Essays: Marcellus Blount, "Caged Birds: Race and Gender in the Sonnet" (Engendering Men 255-38)
To find out more about early African American poetry click [here]
Week 7: The Stanza
T 10/15 Repeating Forms & Repeating Sounds
Poems: Meinke, "Atomic Pantoum" (Reader)Elizabeth Bishop "Sestina" (Reader)
Sylvia Plath, "Daddy" (PIE 1111)
Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art" (Reader)
Anne Sexton, "The Abortion" (Reader)
Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle" (PIE 985)
NOTE: If you click on "Anne Sexton" above you can hear her read her own poetry!
Essays: Handout onThe Stanza
R 10/17 The Meaning of Form
Poems: Also choose two forms from the index in the back of Strong Measures (on reserve, pp. 430-50) or A Formal Feeling Comes (on reserve, pp. 282-292) and read all the poems listed under those two forms. Bring 4 copies of two poems to class. You should be prepared to discuss the hallmarks and significance of those forms. (Consult PEPP for help.)Essays: Robert Duncan, "Ideas of the Meaning of Form" (Claims for Poetry 78-94)
Hayden Carruth. "The Question of Poetic Form" (Claims for Poetry 50-61)
Note: You are responsible for being able to identify the features of all three sonnet forms, as well as the Spenserian stanza, pantoum, sestina, villanelle, blank verse, couplet, quatrain, rhyme royal, and ottava rima. Consult Strong Measures (430-50), the Princeton Encyclopedia (PEPP), PIE, and the Abrams' Glossary for help.
F 10/18 Draft of Paper #2 Due
Week 8: Fall Recess
T 10/22 Vacation
R 10/24 Vacation
Weeks 9 & 10: Building a Narrative
T 10/29 Poems in a Sequence: Station Island
Poems: Heaney, "Station Island" I-IVNotes, Station Island pp. 122-123
W 10/30 Peer Response to Paper #2 Due
R 10/31 Poems: Heaney, "Station Island" V-VIII
NOTE: If you click on "Heaney" above you can hear Seamus Heaney reading many of his most famous poems
Essay: Read Section on Terza Rima in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & PoeticsPeter Sacks, "Interpreting the Genre: The Elegy and the Work of Mourning,"
(The English Elegy 1-37)
M 11/4 Final Draft of Paper #2 Due
T 11/5 Poems: Heaney, "Station Island" (X-XII)
Essay: Tess Gallagher, "The Poem as Time Machine" Claims for Poetry
104-16)
R 11/7 Verse amd The Limits of Narrative: Prose Poetry
Poems: Mary Oliver, "Wings," "I Found a Dead Fox," "In Podibby, Georgia" (reader)
Essays: Donald Wesling, "Narrative of Grammar in the Prose Poem," The New Poetries (172-200)
Ron Sillman, "The New Sentence" (Claims for Poetry 377-398)
Week 11: Free Verse & the American Voice
T 11/12 Walt Whitman and the Voice of "the People"
Poems: Whitman, "Song of Myself" (PIE 687-92)Essays: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," (Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Witcher 222-240)
Annie Finch, "Iambic and Dactylic Associations in Leaves of Grass"(The Ghost of Meter 31-56)
R 11/14 The Free Verse Tradition in America
Poems: W.C. Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow" (PIE 839)Essex Hemphill, "An American Wedding" (Reader)
Audre Lorde, "Between Ourselves" (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)
For a Bibliography of Gay & Lesbian Literature, Culture, and History, clickhere
Week 12: Ballads & A Common Meter
T 11/19 Emily Dickinson & Hymns
Poems: Dickinson "258 (There's a certain Slant)," "465 (I heard a Fly buzz)," "712 (Because I could not stop)" (PIE 727-29), "Amazing Grace" (Reader)
To read any of these Dickinson poems (and many others) click here
Essays: Adrienne Rich, "Vesuvius at Home" (On Lies , Secrets , and Silence 157-83) Annie Finch, "Dickinson and Patriarchal Meter" (The Ghost of Meter 13-30)
T 11/21 Border Ballads
Poems: "El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez," "The Dying Ranger," "The Pursuit of Villa" (Reader)
To read more corridos (in Spanish!) click here
Essays: Amerigo Paredes, "The Corrido on the Border" (With a Pistol in His Hand 129-50
Week 13-14: Singing the Blues
T 11/26 Poems: Langston Hughes, "Midwinter Blues," "The Weary Blues,"
"Southern Mammy Sings" (Reader)
For a Bibliography on Criticism on Langston Hughes click here
To access the Eyeneer Blues Archive click here
Essays: DuBois, "The Sorrow Songs" (The Souls of Black Folk Chapter XIV)
Steven Tracy, Langston Hughes & the Blues
W 11/27 Proposal for Final Paper Due
R 11/28 Thanksgiving Vacation
T 12/3 Women and the Blues
Poems: Gwendolyn Brooks, "Queen of the Blues" (Reader)Sandra McPherson, "Bad Mother Blues" (Reader)
Blues &Women (Reader)
Essays: Michele Russell, "Slave Codes & Liner Notes" But Some of Us Are Brave (129-40)
Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" (Claims for Poetry 459-68)
For a bug in the making, see this description of Brooks' "We Real Cool"
Week 14, cont.: Positioning the Reader: The Multiple Voices of Literary Criticism
R 12/5 Poem: Elizabeth Alexander, "The Venus Hottentot" (Reader)
Essay: Sander Gilman, "Black Bodies, White Bodies: Toward anIconography of Female Sexuality in Late Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature," "Race," Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (232-61)
Journal: 1 page interpretation of "The Venus Hottentot" using New Critical, Feminist, Reader Response, Deconstructionism, New Historical, or Psychological Approach. For help see handout or the following books on reserve: Steven Lynn's Texts & Contexts or William Vesterman's Literature: An Introduction to Critical Reading. Gilman's article will give you background information on the original Venus Hottentot that will help you construct your reading.
Week 15: A Poetics of Reed?
M 12/9 Paper #3 Due
T 12/10 Poems: Gary Snyder, "I Went to the Maverick Bar," "Front Lines,"
"Bedrock" (PIE 1107-09)
Essays: Louise Erdrich, "Where I Ought to Be" (Handout)
In-class: please bring in 4 copies of a Reed poem to share. We will listen to Paul Anderson's "Unplugged...at Reed College, Paideia 1994" in class.
Monday December 16Portfolios 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 Monday Sept. 16 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 9/23.
Paper #2: Draft due by noon on Monday Oct. 9 in my Eliot Hall mailbox
Explicate a sonnet or an adapted sonnet (from Strong Measures, PIE, or elsewhere). 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? Please include a copy of the poem if it is not in our books. Length: 3-5 pages. Post in Group Folder. Peer Responses Due 10/30. Final Draft Due 11/4.
Third Paper: due by noon on Monday Dec. 9 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. 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. 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 weak. 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. You may want to consider the experimental prose we have been reading in Claims for Poetry. Length: 1-2 pages.
Portfolio Due Dec. 16