ENGLISH 647: CONTEMPORARY POETRY Fall 2008
Instructor: Richard Terrill Phone: 5500
Office: AH 212C Hours: T 4-5; W 11-12, 3-5; Th 10-11 (e-office) + by appt.
Email: richard.terrill@mnsu.edu
COURSE OBJECTIVE
Our objective is to become familiar with the work of a few representative American poets of the last fifty years. We will study how they built their poems with the hopes that an appreciation of their craft can help us in our own writing (poetry or prose). We will also consider something of the historical and cultural context of their work, study which is interesting and valuable for its own sake, but which also should be important to us as writers, readers, and teachers of contemporary literature.
While each of us will certainly not like every poem we read this term, "workshopping" these published, in some cases widely anthologized poems (written in some cases by poets no longer living) is not a course objective. Instead of suggesting how you think a poet might have done something differently or better, try instead to ask yourself why the poet may have done something the way he or she did--for what technical, thematic, personal, cultural, or historical reasons.
STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
We will make every attempt to accommodate qualified students with disabilities. If you are a student with a documented disability, please see the instructor as early in the semester as possible to discuss the necessary accommodations, and/or contact the Disability Service Office at (507)-389-2825 (voice) or 1-800-627-3529 (MRS?TTY).
TEXTS
Eight American Poets. Joel Conarroe
Different Hours. Stephen Dunn
Given Sugar, Given Salt. Jane Hirshfield
Rose. Li-Young Lee
The Second Four Books of Poems. W.S. Merwin
An Atlas of the Difficult World. Adrienne Rich
Belloq’s Ophelia. Natasha Tretheway
The Complete Book of Kong. William Trowbridge
REQUIREMENTS
Read assignments from the eight texts by the appropriate due dates. Write a mid-term examination on the poets in the anthology, a 500-600 word reading reaction on six of the texts, and a 1500-2500 word essay on the seventh text. This essay which will also serve as the basis for a seminar presentation. Attend class regularly and participate in class discussion.
GRADES
The reading reactions, class participation, and attendance will count about 40%, the seminar paper and presentation about 30%, and the mid-term exam about 30%. Unless you’re ill or grieving, there’s no reason to miss class, and unexcused absences will affect your final grade. I will use shaded grading (+ and -) in this class.
8/27 Discuss modern vs. contemporary poetry. See William Carlos Williams video.
9/3 Read Ginsberg’s poems "Supermarket," "America," "Sunflower Sutra," “Kaddish” and the excerpt from "Howl" in 8 Poets. Read “The Forbidden Planet of Character,” 131-147 (email attachment).
9/10 Read Roethke (skip 7, 20 (“Longing”). Read “The Waking,” “The Geranium,” at http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/.
9/17 Read Lowell (skip 77, 78, 97, 102, 104-106). Read “The Forbidden Planet of Character,” 147-156 (email attachment).
9/24 Read Bishop (skip 35, 42, 51, 64) in 8 Poets. Read “In the Waiting Room” and “At the Fishouseses” at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15211 and 15209
10/1 Read Plath (197-202, 206-218) and Berryman (142-155). Read excerpt from “American Poetry in the 1960s, 193-197 (email attachment). You may find some of the following helpful http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/plath/plath.htm (strictly optional)
10/8 In class mid term exam.
10/15 Read Merwin, The Moving Target and The Lice. Read excerpt from “American Poetry in the 1960s, 210-213 (email attachment). Reading reaction due. Presentation.
10/22 Read Rich, Atlas of the Difficult World. Reading reaction due. Presentation.
10/29 Read Dunn, Different Hours. Reading reaction due. Presentation.
11/5 Read Hirshfield, Given Sugar, Given Salt. Reading reaction due. Presentation.
11/12 Read Tretheway, Belloq’s Ophelia. Reading reaction due. Presentation.
11/19 Read Lee, Rose. Reading reaction due. Presentation.
11/26 Reading of individual poems TBA
12/3 Read Trowbridge, Complete Book of Kong, Reading reaction due. Presentation.
12/11 Final Class Meeting, Thursday 2:45-4:45.
AMERICAN POETRY (beginning late 40's/early 50's)
Eliot & W.C. Williams
New Critics
academic, formal
poets: Tate, Ransom,
Wilbur
("window" vs. "open door")
("cooked" vs. "raw")
Beats (Ginsberg, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Corso,
Snyder, Di Prima)
Howl 1956
&
Black Moutain (Creeley, Levertov, Duncan, Olson)
&
New York School (Ashberry, O'Hara, Koch)
Lowell --------------à 1959 : Life Studies
Confessional poets (Plath, Sexton, Snodgrass, Berryman)
Rich -----------------à 1963 Snapshots of a Daughter In Law ("pre-feminist")
Bly, Kinnell,--------à 1960's: Deep Imagists
Merwin, J. Wright (influenced by translation: Neruda, Rilke; and French and
Stafford, Spanish Surrealists)
-late 60's and 70's: Naked Poetry anthology
-recognition of Black poets
-emergence/recognition of women's poetry/poetry by women
-70's/80's rise of creative writing programs in universities
-expansion of NEA, proliferation of small presses,
-80's multiculturalism in academia
late 1980's
New Formalist
Poets and backlash
CONTEMPORARY POETRY (contrasted with Modern Poetry)1
MORE PERSONAL (or seems to be)
EMBRACES AMBIGUITY
more often FREE VERSE
LESS ACADEMIC WIT
LESS LITERARY ALLUSION
MORE INDIVIDUALISTIC (less consciously writing out of a tradition)
LESS RELIANCE ON CLASSICAL MYTH
(substituting contemporary cultural figures, recent history, newly created myths)
MORE CONCERNED WITH THE USE OF COMMON AMERICAN SPEECH
1 freely adapted from A. Poulin, Jr., "Radical Tradition in Contemporary American Poetry
READING RESPONSES
Minimum 500 words (around two pages double spaced), due in class the day the book is discussed. The written response will help direct your reading, help you read more closely and carefully. It will insure that you have something specific and insightful to contribute to class discussion.
You may center your response around one point, but more often, perhaps, you will have several different, even unrelated observations. You may structure the response as one essay, or as a series of smaller writings each making a different observation.
The response doesn’t have to be a formal academic essay. But the writing should not be vague, windy, general, conversational, wordy, etc. Nor is this primarily a creative writing exercise.
A few possible sources for your responses:
--Anything you think is important or interesting.
--Anything you don't understand (or anything you think could be interpreted in more than one way)
--Anything you have strong feelings about.
--Connections you perceive between lines, images, words, and so on.
--Connections among poems.
--Connections between this work and the work of other writers.
--*observations on matters of technique: Voice, Image and metaphor, Diction and syntax, Rhythm and music, Form and line, Modes (narrative, lyric, dramatic), Setting/Place.
--*observations on thematic development in several poems or the book as a whole
(*these last two are drawn from the guidelines for the MFA exam
http://www.english2.mnsu.edu/cwpubs/mfadocs/exam0811.pdf)
I plan to evaluate the responses as follows
5 points: outstanding (A/A+)
4 points: very good (A/A-)
3 points: adequate (B)
1 or 2 points: not graduate level work or not meeting the terms of the assignment
HINTS FOR YOUR SEMINAR PRESENTATION
1. Your presentation should cover some aspect of the work of one poet (though you may compare the work with that of another poet if that is helpful). The presentation will likely cover more than one poem (unless you're writing about a particularly long or difficult poem). I'm assuming most of us are interested primarily in matters of technique and craft and tone, but thematic inquiry in these presentations is also fine.
2. You have up to 20 minutes to speak. Practice your presentation and time yourself. Overpreparation is a good sign, but you'll probably not be able to say all that you've planned to say. We’ll take another 20 minutes for questions and comments. You may have people respond at the end of your presentation, or solicit comment as you go. (If you're insecure about not getting any comments or questions from the group, prepare some questions or issues ahead of time that you can raise if you're met with silence.)
3. Focus on a particular, limited topic. Have specific thesis, idea, or series of ideas--a bone to pick or a horse to ride. Assume an audience that has read the work carefully and thus has a knowledge of the poet's work. Avoid giving the presentation as an introduction to the poet, which we can cover in class
4. You need to get in and get out quickly. There's no time for elaborate introductions, personal anecdotes, vague or general critical language, "background" information, creative writing, games and gimmicks.
5. The success of most presentations will be in direct proportion to the amount of time they spend looking directly at the poems. What do the poems say and mean? How do they work? You may use secondary sources if that makes you feel more confident, but this material should remain secondary to our exploring of the poems themselves.
6. Have the paper, or a near-final draft of it, completed by the day of your presentation. If, however, after delivering the presentation, you would like to revise the paper, let me know. It's perfectly ok to read all or part of the paper, summarizing where you need to, stopping for our questions and comments as you go along, if you like.
7. I’ll also ask everyone to make two copies of the paper, one to be made available to anyone in the class in the box outside my door.
8. I would rather have you present something that's your own idea, and specific, than have you present a more polished, but too general critical summary.
9. Let me and other students working on the same poet as you know in advance what topic(s) you hope to cover and what poems you'll likely look at, so we can avoid duplication of effort (though some overlap is inevitable).