English 438: MODERN AMERICAN POETRY (After Robert Frost)

Clarinda Harriss

OFFICE LOGISTICS:

Office: 218 K
Phone: TSU 830-2869
Office hours: before and after class; other times by appointment

BOOKS:

Ellman and O'Clair, eds., THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN POETRY, 2nd ed.
Clarinda Harriss Lott and Sara deFord, FORMS OF VERSE: BRITISH AND AMERICAN. (extremely useful for analytic procedures and prosodic terminology).

REQUIREMENTS:

l. Active classroom participation informed by careful reading of assigned material.
2. Written work:

• A seminar report, to be handed in as a formal paper and also to be presented orally to class, on the aesthetic and craft of one modern American poet whom you will choose.
• An ongoing "response journal," which will be collected periodically during semester, in which you jot brief notes concerning your response to poems assigned for class discussion, on class discussion itself, and on material from the "real world" you find poetically interesting. (This journal will also be a good place for you to write down the definitions of various prosodic terms which will come up in the course of our discussion of various poets' craftsmanship and which will be useful in your own discussion of the poet whose craft you choose to analyze.
  DO NOT ASSUME THE INSTRUCTOR WILL KEEP REMINDING YOU TO MAKE ENTRIES IN YOUR JOURNAL.)
• Reading in at least three different recent issues each of POETRY Magazine, The American Poetry Review (available in Cook Library) and a third poetry periodical of your choice, and making reasonably detailed notes on your reading in your response journal.
• A final exam including an essay on the poetry periodicals above and another based on material gleaned from classmates' seminar reports.

Grading is based on an average of the grades for class work, seminar reports, journal, and final exam.

AIMS OF THE COURSE:

1. To acquaint or reacquaint you with some of the socially and critically acclaimed "greats" of modern American poetry.
2. To introduce you to significant, less well-known poets.
3. To help you perceive trends, directions, influences--both in poetry itself and in poetry criticism.
4. To work on that perennial project, rethinking the canon: how can women and other minorities be more accurately represented in Modern American Poetry? What have the "greats" contributed both positively and negatively, and what other contributions should be looked at?
5. TO ENJOY POETRY, paying tribute to its genuine mysteries, de-mystifying its nuts and bolts, making use of the classroom to examine something that is NOT the sole property of Academe. (To these ends, the ideas and expertise of many people other than the instructor will be called upon.)

POETS:

The following are poets we will try to cover, grouped in ways that, one hopes, will make real sense after the poets have been read and discussed. Neither this list nor our classroom approach will be chronological; therefore, you are responsible for reading the introductory material in your anthologies and getting a handle on each poet's niche in time.

As we go along, we may make changes in order, or we may add and/or delete individual poets. You will be notified of such changes at least one class session in advance so you can do the appropriate reading for the upcoming class. When we will not be looking at all the textbooks' inclusions for a given poet, you will be told ahead of time which selections to concentrate on.

Meeting One:
Course logistics and syllabus explanation
T. S. Eliot (VOICES AND VISIONS)

Meeting Two:
William Carlos Williams (VOICES AND VISIONS)

Meeting Three:
Wallace Stevens (VOICES AND VISIONS)

Meeting Four:
Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop (VOICES AND VISIONS)
(first seminar report due to be handed in)
(classroom presentation of seminar reports starts)

Meeting Five:
Langston Hughes (VOICES AND VISIONS)
Amiri Baraka (Lamian Literary Video)
(seminar reports)

Meeting Six:
Robert Lowell (VOICES AND VISIONS)
(seminar reports)

Meeting Seven:
Sylvia Plath (VOICES AND VISIONS)
Anne Sexton
(seminar reports)

Meeting Eight:
Alan Ginsberg (with video)
Diane Wakowski
(seminar reports)

Meeting Nine:
Richard Wilbur
Anthony Hecht
(seminar reports)

Meeting Ten:
Adrienne Rich
Denise Levertov)
(seminar reports)
Lucille Clifton (Lamian Literary Video)

Meeting Eleven:
William Stafford
James Dickey
(seminar reports)

Meeting Twelve: Catch up!

Meeting Thirteen:
Margaret Atwood
Carolyn Forche
Rita Dove
(seminar reports)
(final collection of response journals--journals to be checked during class meeting)

Meeting Fourteen:
(review and seminar reports)

Final Exam:

• Short answer section: prosodic terms, critical terms.
• Questions: based on our in-class readings and discussions, as well as your readimg for home assignments.
• Essay: based on your library reading of current issues of POETRY and The AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW.
• Essay: based on ideas gleaned from your classmates' seminar reports.