[Updated 05/16/2006]

Dr. Jeffrey Lee

Office: Ross 1170A

Office Hrs: by appointment. Phone calls to (970) 351-1476.

Course Description & Objectives | Course Requirements and Evaluation | Required Texts | Schedule | About the Workshop & Practical Guidelines | Final Portfolio Guidelines |

{(2. a) If you are an independent learner, there is no oral report. However, there is a rough draft due on your research project. The rough draft will still count as 10% of your final grade. The research project is an opportunity for students to explore the value of a particular poetics. In this way, students gain a more palpable experience of the practical function of literary criticism. Reports, negotiated with the instructor, are presented a week or more before the deadline for the research project, which is usually at the end of the course.}

{If you are an independent learner, there is no literal workshop to participate in. Instead of being evaluated on how you respond to your peers, you will be evaluated here on how well you revise your work.

20% of final grade for students in the creative writing track
or 10% of final grade for students in the lit/crit track}

 

 

(3. b) participation in the poetry seminar

10% of final grade for students in the creative writing track
or 20% of final grade for students in the lit/crit track

 

{(3. b) If you are an independent learner, there is only participation in the poetry seminar via written responses to the readings, and only I will read these responses.

10% of final grade for students in the creative writing track
or 20% of final grade for students in the lit/crit track}

Olds, Sharon. The Gold Cell.

An ice-breaker and some creative writing exercises.

Read the online "lecture" on major French Symbolists in fin de siècle Paris, décadence, aestheticism, (influences on Modernists).

HW: You have to read all the readings below and reply briefly to them (you can select the ones that are the most appealing to you).

Your responses may focus in on specific devices such as imagery, rhythm, form etc.

One important difference between these responses and the kind you would submit solely to me is that these will go into a public forum where others will read them also. So you should talk with your peers about the readings in the literary response forum. (Please keep this forum free of other chatter. There will be another forum where you can post and and all other remarks, questions and ideas that you like.)

 

{Independent learners also read the intro to the workshop methods. But independent learners can go at their own speed and take up to a year to finish all the work. Independent learners still do any and all writing exercises that others do though sometimes there may be adaptations required. Unless otherwise noted, homework responses are the same for independent learners.}

 

[Everyone, please read through the poems on the following Baudelaire & Rimbaud links.]

Here is a link to a "Critique of Baudelaire's Poem "Correspondences" (1852-56?) by Henri Dorra.* Scroll to the bottom to see the translation and the French.

http://www.studiocleo.com/librarie/baudelaire/critique.html

And here is Robert Lowell's translation of Baudelaire's famous prefatory poem to Fleurs du Mal, "To the Reader," which ends by insulting the reader. This is important because it is also an important literary source for T. S Eliot's The Waste Land line 76. This tells you something important about Eliot's tone in his poem.

http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/Charles_Baudelaire.html

At the bottom of this page, you can also read a very nice translation of Baudelaire's "Receuillement," which is one of his most beautiful and most translated poems. This page was created by Dr. Donald Wellman at Daniel Webster College, NH.

And here is the poem in the original French in case you can read French:

http://www.poetes.com/baud/brecueill.htm

Rimbaud links:

If you know French, here is the original "Drunken Boat," "Le Bateau Ivre" at:

http://www.poetes.com/rimbaud/bateau.htm

Here is a link to a new translation of Arthur Rimbaud's famous master piece, "The Drunken Boat."

http://members.tripod.com/RoadSide6/dbpoem.htm (Advisory-- do not try to e-mail the web master, for that is a misleadingly named link, "L. Deal," that leads to aol.com.

{Independent learners also have a first poem due in the Poetry Workshop Forum for Independent Learners}

Read the online "lecture" on Modernism**** Yeats, Pound, Eliot, H. D.

Also read the Bio notes and poems of Yeats, Pound, Eliot, & HD through the links...

Then go to the Academy of American Poets site:

Also please read A Coney of the Mind by Ferlinghetti and this background material on the Beats and Ferlinghetti’s poetics in history and especially in the context of the San Francisco Bay.

Post your own poem in the forum. 

Write a response (approx 2 pages double-spaced) to any one poem by Hughes, Brooks, or Ferlinghetti.)  Try to do a close reading of some passage(s) in the work.

{For an Extra Credit writing assignment, try writing your own confessional poem.}

Unit 7: Veronica Patterson (poems TBA)

Unit 8: Mark Strand (read whole book).

Unit 9: Yusef Komunyakaa

Read these poems: "At the Screen Door," "Work," "Praising Dark Places," "Birds on a Powerline," "Songs for my Father," "Translating Footsteps," "Passions," "For You, Sweetheart, I'll Sell Plutonium Reactors," "Untitled Blues," "Back Then," "Elegy for Thelonius," [i.e. Thelonius Monk] "Woman, I got the Blues," "The Music That Hurts," "When in Rome—Apologia," and all the poems from pp. 129-159. Suggestion: If you don't get some of the references, try a little research on the web.

Post revisions in the forum.

Unit 12: FINAL PORTFOLIOS DUE. Research project due.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP:
The goal of workshop dialogues is to help you gain more independence about aesthetic decisions. Your peers and I help you see the real consequences of each choice you make. In contrast to the ideas, positions, values of others, you must develop for yourself the insight and skills to overcome your own aesthetic, philosophical, technical, political and/or generic problems. Workshop participation is where you actually do much of the learning that happens in this class. It can be great fun, but it can also be extraordinarily hard work for your intellect and emotions.

{Independent learners should read over the workshop format and workshop guidelines even though many of them will not apply as the only respondent is me. I will try to follow the spirit and letter of the workshop guidelines just as I would expect everyone else to.}

THE WORKSHOP FORMAT

{Independent learners can ignore all of this section.}

In the workshop forum, you read every poem posted by your peers and respond within a few days.

Please note that the best way to respond is to copy (cut/paste) the poem out of BlackBoard and reply within any wordprocessor by inserting your comments within square brackets, i.e. to show the other readers where your voice is interjecting. Use white space to separate your remarks from the poems also. This will make life far easier! I will evaluate the responding that you do holistically, i.e. I'll look at how much you are being truly helpful and constructive to each other, and this becomes a big part of your grade.

The advantage here is that everyone takes the job of responding more seriously because it is a large part of your grade. You will help each other more and, ultimately, become more independent as writers.

[If you want to read an essay about the pedagogical theory behind this practice, go to this URL: http://www.schoolcraft.cc.mi.us/pdfs/cce/00HartingLoo.pdf
I wrote this essay with a friend and former colleague in creative writing; this is HIGHLY recommended if you are planning to be a teacher at any level.]

As a writer in a workshop, you learn to more effectively focus on those areas where your work needs critical attention.

In a typical week, half of the people in the tutorial post a poem or a fragment of a longer poem (the maximum length is 1-2 spages typed). When it is your turn to present, you post the work and a few questions or concerns that you have about the work. If you really cannot think of anything to ask, I may offer up a question or two. You may respond afterwards, but only after everyone has had a chance to reply to your poem.

PRACTICAL WORKSHOP GUIDELINES

{Independent learners should abide by the 4 points below:}

 

Our goal is to create a comfortable environment for sharing work, so please follow these guidelines when you present work:

(i) Post new work whenever possible.
Recycling old work almost always results in slower progress and less actual learning. Significant revisions of earlier work, however, are often a good thing to present to class.

 

(ii) Always post at least one question about your work whenever you present anything.
If you are still evolving as a writer, you should have at least some doubt in your mind about some part of any new work. It is not as productive to bring old works about which you feel completely certain. (If you are sure it is perfect, you won’t need, or want, any help.)

 

(iii) Decide what you hope to accomplish with a work before you bring it to workshop.
You can help your peers get to the heart of the work if you think it through beforehand instead of abdicating all responsibility and depending on everyone else to decide what you have accomplished or failed to accomplish.

 

(iv) NEVER ask others to rewrite your work — your work is always your responsibility.

 

 

 

{Independent learners can ignore the 5 points below:}

 

When you are responding:

(i) Try to discern the writer’s goals before you judge how successful the work is.
One has to know what a work is trying to do before one can judge if it works; one must
understand the needs of the work before one can constructively critique it.

 

(ii) Try not to prescribe remedies for someone else’s work.

This puts a writer in the position of a patient or, worse, a disease. Even though many ask for such treatment (imagining the short-term pain will be worth the long-term gain), any one standard that forecloses dialogue deprives someone of her/his chance to think creatively through the work.

 

(iii) Try to be as honest as possible but be aware of others’ feelings....

 

(iv) NEVER rewrite others’ work in your own voice....

 

(v) NEVER assume that any work is autobiographical....
Even if a writer says, “This really happened,” we will discuss the work without reference to anyone’s “real life.” But we will ask about the verisimilitude (or the life-like quality) of the work because readers need to willingly suspend their disbelief. Just because something really did happen does not mean it is credible.

Final Portfolios—Principles & Practical Guidelines for Evaluation

 

Length: 10-15 pages. No more than one poem per page. No minimum length on poems. You can send this as a Word Attachment with an e-mail. You can also send it as a WordPerfect or pdf file. People who use free software can send it as an OpenOffice file.

Ideally, the work is moving, evocative, powerful and comprehensible. The feeling is fully realized.
Rule of thumb—it makes people want to read more.

The work demonstrates aesthetic sense appropriate to the needs of the subject of the work, and it shows an awareness of the needs of a real audience (however you define that).
Rule of thumb—it says what you intend to others. There are no inconsistencies or misleading or inadvertently offensive or obscure cues in the writing.

The manuscript represents your work in the best possible light, i.e. it has no mechanical, grammatical mistakes, unintended errors in factual information, misspellings etc.
Rule of thumb—it is ready to present to a total stranger like an editor.

 

The work shows growth, development, or increased range or depth or inventiveness:
(i) new works
(ii) revisions of earlier works—reflecting changes in aesthetic sense....
(iii) fresh, original, innovative, or engaging use of whatever genre is presented.
Rule of thumb—you feel a difference &/or other people notice a change.

 

Important: quality is far more important than quantity! Even if you have ten pages of outstanding material, your grade will be hurt if you surround it with lesser work. Be selective when you submit your final portfolio just as you would when you submit to any respectable publication.

Important: there are RED FLAGS in poetry mss. that automatically disqualify them from being published or read as seriously as they deserve. RED FLAGS will pull down your grade.