Office: Ross 1170A

Course Description:

A survey of representative modern, postmodern and contemporary poets.

This course will draw upon material covered in English courses that include substantial readings in poetry/poetics, especially English 240 and 340 (poetry), English 211, 213, and 214, and English 314 Shakespeare in Context: Poetry, English 351 Medieval Literature, English 352 Renaissance Literature, English 353 Restoration Literature, English 354 The Romantic Movement, English 355 Victorian Prose and Poetry, English 356 Twentieth Century Literature, and English 407 Advanced Studies in Poetry.

Course Objectives:

To enable students to become familiar with poets, and poetics/esthetics of the modernists, postmodernists, New York School, the Beats, the confessional school, feminist revisionists, the language school, various ethnopoetic schools, etc. in poetry.

To apply the skills of literary criticism to reading experiences closer to and by contemporaries, to argue the relative merits of various poets/poetics, and ultimately to better understand the practical function of literary criticism.

Course Requirements:

(1) an oral report is an opportunity for students to teach a part of the class and to argue for the value of a particular poet, poem or school of poetics. In this way, students gain a more palpable experience of the practical function of literary criticism. Reports, negotiated with the instructor, are presented in the second half of the term.

(2) a research paper on a contemporary poet or school of poetry/poetics that the student finds especially inspiring or relevant. Students demonstrate appreciation of the craft, techniques and devices of poetry. (10-15 pp. with at least a dozen works cited, including web-based resources, and other media).

Method of Evaluation: Letter grade.

ENG 441 Required Texts:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind
Yusef Komunyakaa, Neon Vernacular
Mark Strand, Blizzard of One
Marcus Cafagña, The Broken World (University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06550-6)
David Ray, The Death of Sardanapalus (Howling Dog Press. ISBN 1-882863-55-0)

Week 1: The Modernism of Yeats & Pound (readings on the web & from a handout)

For a nice brief bio of Pound and a very nice selection of his poems, go here:

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet265.html

Make sure you read these astonishingly lively poems online: "Envoi," "Further Instructions," "The Garden," "H. S. Maubebrly (Life and Contacts) Part I," "In a Station of the Metro," "Lament of the Frontier Guard," "Meditatio," "A Pact," "Portrait d'une Femme," "The River-Merchant's Wife: a Letter." [PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO THE PACT WITH WALT WHITMAN!]

You should also visit the Academy of American Poets site on Pound to hear him recite his first Canto.

Week 2: Pound & H.D. (readings on the web & more Pound from a handout)

Read the Hilda Doolittle bio in brief and 10 short poems at:

Week 3: T. S. Eliot (readings on the web)

For a nice short T. S. Eliot bio and a nice recording of one of his nicer lyric poems:

http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C070D

There are only two poems to read, "Gerontion" and The Waste Land.

Some of you may prefer reading a hypertext version that shows footnotes without needing to scroll around pages:

http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/

Some of you may prefer the more traditional version at http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem790.html and some of you may just want to read it in a book, of course.

One intriguing fact about "Gerontion" is that the word "History" in that poem used to be "Nature" in an earlier draft. This fact coupled with the fact that Eliot's wife Vivien was unfaithful to him make a very different reading of this persona poem possible...

Thursday: Working in groups of two or three, pick a theme in The Waste Land and trace its variations and discuss their significance. For example, trace “the city,” images of the city/cosmopolitanism, and the “Unreal city....” Or trace images of death as a theme in the poem, images of sexual decadence or just decadence, or Eliot using the voices of women as figures of pathos and great feeling, or images of women in The Waste Land.

Week 4: Wallace Stevens

Go to this link and listen to "The Idea of Order at Key West."

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/124

Go to this link and read poems 2, 5, 6, and 7.

http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poet311.html

Also read the Bio note at the link above.

Then go to the link below and read the articles on the long poem "Sunday Morning."

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/sunday.htm

A paper handout will come Tuesday with some other poems.

Week 5: Read the bio note and all the poems by Gwendolyn Brooks here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/165 & the bio note and all the poems by Langston Hughes here:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83

And read these related links:

A Brief Guide to the Harlem Renaissance: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5657

A Brief Guide to Jazz Poetry at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5660

Poetic Form: Blues Poem: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5768

Week 6: Lowell & Berryman [09/27 and 29]

Start here with Lowell and print out and read the BIO http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/10 and print out and read "To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage," "Dolphin," "Epilogue," "For the Union Dead" [and as a secondary source on this poem, see the commentary here http://lieven.studentenweb.org/old/Robert_Lowell.html], "History," "Home After Three Months Away," "Man and Wife," "Memories of West Street and Lepke," "Skunk Hour," and "Waking in the Blue."

Start here with Berryman and print out the bio and listen to or read the 3 Dreamsongs: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/6

Then go here and print out and read Dream Song #14 http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/john-berryman

and "The Ball Poem" at http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/john-berryman/1072

QUIZ #1 on Thursday! Identify by title and author poems that we discussed by Brooks or Hughes. A few general knowledge short answers may be required.

Week 7: Sexton & Plath (readings on the web and/or handouts) [10/04 and 06]

If you visit here now http://www.poets.org/ you will see that Ginsberg's HOWL is 50 years old as of October 6. So this is actually the best moment in history to read HOWL because there is just enough aesthetic distance from it to appreciate the greatness of the achievement but not so much historical distance that you can't tell anymore what he is talking about. So for the text of the great poem, some of its colorful histories, and a link to Pacifica Radio (with an mp3 of the poem) as a PDF, click here.

(I know it's a lot of reading, but this should be fun reading. If you are crushed for time, read Ferlinghetti first for Tuesday and hold off on the Ginsberg reading, which we will discuss Thursday.)

QUIZ #3 on Thursday! Identify by title poems that we discussed by Plath and Sexton. A few general knowledge short answers may be required.

Week 9: [10/18 & 10/20]

Marcus Cafagña, author of The Broken World visits our class! (Read the whole book.) You can bring friends to this session. Atendance at the evening reading is mandatory!

If you want to earn some EC points, you can submit a 500-word response to any one poem by Marcus Cafagña on Tuesday the 18th (firm deadline).

Week 10: [10/25 & 10/27]

Gary Snyder, eco-poetics and Zen influences (readings on the web are gathered as a PDF here.) & O’Hara (for a PDF click here) & Ashbery (for a PDF click here).

Week 11: Yusef Komunyakaa*