English 288
Charles Bernstein
Spring 2010
Tues/Thurs 1:30-2:50
CPCW 111

Revolution of the Word: Modernist American Poetry and Poetics 1900-1945.

Introduction
Requirements
Wreading listserve archive
posts to wreading@mailman.ssc.upenn.edu

For syllabus start, click here

Required Book (at Penn Book Center)
The New Anthology of American Poetry: Modernisms 1900-1950, Vol. 2, ed. Steven Gould Axelorod, Camille Roman, and Thomas Travisano; Rutgers University Press

Ted Greenwald, In Your Dreams

Note: Much of the reading is on-line, not from the anthology.
Recommended: Modernisms: A Literary Guide by Peter Nicholls 

Please post your response by Monday night for Tuesday's class and by Wednesday night for Thursday's class; earlier if possible and in no later case later than 7am on the morning of the class.

1. (January 14) Introduction
If possible, read ahead for the Jan. 19 session; for those who've taken English 288 from the Fall, if possible, post your response for Jan. 19 on or before, or soon after, the first class.

2. (January 19) The American Scene in the New Century & before the War: Masters, Robinson, Dunbar

•Poem Profiler self-test: fill out the profiler in the abstract, to reflect your own preferences
•Pick the poem you like best and least. Use the profiler on the two poems.
•Based on your poem profiling self-test, what does this tell you about your preferences?
•Which of the poets this week comes the closest to spoken English and which the least (give specific examples)? Is this a value you like or don't like in poetry?
Wreading Experiment:: Write a poem similar to one of Master's poems in Spoon River Anthology, making up your own character.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

Extensions (optional)
Frances Densmore (1867-1957) Chippewa and other native American  songs
Rexroth selectiin of songs: #1, #2;    Rexroth on American Indian songs(1956)
see also anthology pp. 9-15
Densmore digital books
recordings from 1907 and after (MP3s)
These Cylinder recording: requires RealPlayer: Audio The Poor are Many; Audio Moccasin Game Song; Audio Why Should I be Jealous; Audio Friendly Song; Audio Southern Dance Song 
from Shaking the Pumpkin:
(1): Four Poems for Coyote (Simon Ortiz)
(2) Aztec
(3) Poems for the Game of Silence (Ojibwe and Mandan)
(4) Wishing Bone Cycle (Swampy Cree)
(6) Navaho
(7): Schwerner Variations
*
Black Elk Speaks, John Neihardt (1932): Black Elk (1863–1950); Niehard (1881-1973): full text
*
James Whitcombe Riley (1849-1916): LOC 1912 sound recordings: "Little Orphant Annie" (with 1912 sound recording), "The Raggedy Man"

KWH Reading 1/21, 6pm: Tonya Foster and Jen Scappetone (Emergency series)

modernist time line
showed this in first class, briefly. overview of key events in the period


3. (Jan. 21) Modern Contrasts: Lowell, Hartley, and and Moore

•Repeat queston: Which of the poets (if any of them!) this week comes the closest to spoken English and which the least (give specific examples)? Is this a value you like or don't like in poetry? Howe does this compare to Arlington and Robinson.
•For Lowell, what are the "patterns" in the poem of that title? Give examples of patterns she
might have been thinking about in the time the poem was written?What does Arenberg say about patters in "For Forms that Are Free"? Contrast the approaches of the poems?!
Wreading: Take all the words from a Moore or the Lowell poem and scramble them to create a new poem. Alternate: Take the Lowell or Morre and erase half the words to create a new poem.

4. (Jan. 26) Early Frost
First: Audio: Robert Frost reading "Mending Wall" response
Next: Frost in anthology; class discussion will focus on "Mending Wall" (1914) and possibly "Birches" (1915)
Further background (optional): Robert Frost Map page
E-text of "Mending Wall"; video realization with Frost's voice of "After Apple Pickin" (audio of poem)
•Pick a poem give a brief summary of the content. How is this summary different from the poem?
•In what way is Frost different the poets from the preceding class? On the question of quality (give crititeria!): compare a Frost poem to a Lowell or Masters poem.
•What about Frost and the vernacular?
• What about the form of Frost's poems?
•A question on mood or tone: Is Frost an affirmative/happy poet or more dark/disturbing: site specific poems or passages.
•Discuss the audio recording: how does it compare to the printed text?
Wreading Experiments:
•Reverse the order of the words line for line.
•Translate one of the poems into a totally contemporary idiom, including references and diction.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

5.  (Jan. 28) African-American Modernism : Part I

How does Brown handle the issue of song transcription and vernacular?
•Discuss the thread of song/dialect/vernacular/poetry as it moves through the selected poems. For example, contrast Dunbar to the poets this week and each to the other.
Wreading:
•Transcribe a poem from a recording without consulting the "original" written text. Try to create appropriate line breaks and layout. Try several different formats.
•Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem and translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence. Or translate the poem into another literary style or a different diction, for example into -- or out of -- a slang or vernacular.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the list

6/7 (Feb. 2/4). Gertrude Stein: When This You See Remember Me
Part One
"If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso" & audio at
Stein at PennSound;   Man Ray photo (exact resemblance of exact resemblance)
further reading: Brian Reed on the recording: CSE/Muse
;Response: Rivka Fogel
Tender Buttons (complete) (see excerpts in anthology) [Response: Laura Minskoff, Alexandra Gold]
Part Two
"Identity: A Poem" Response: Trisha Low
"Composition as Explanation" in anthology and full work linked here; public excerpt here
"Idem: the Same; A Valentine for Sherwood Anderson" -- in anthology + audio
"Rose is a rose"
PennSound recordings
"Five Words in a Line"
Extensions (optional):
I have written several essays on Stein, collected here.
anthology selections
"What Are Masterpieces": excerpt
Williams on Stein
Note Stein resources also at MAPS..
•Does it make a difference in your reading of the poems by Stein or Amy Lowell, or a Bessie Smith blues, that they are by women or Frost that he is a man? How? If these were written by the other gender, how would that change the meaning?
•Discuss the experience of hearing Stein versus reading her work as a printed text.
•In Stein's Tender Buttons, what are the possible meanings of the title? Why is the section called "objects"? Why is the poem written in a prose format?
•Discuss Stein's famous line "Rose is a rose is a rose." What's going on in this line; suggest as many dynamics as possible
•Use the parts of the poem profiler on one of the sections of Tender Buttons to aid you assessing the form and tone
•How does Stein's work relate to Lowell's "Patterns" or Frosts "wall"?
•Is this work abosorptive or does it disrupt the reader's absorption?
Wreading:
•Write a poem using a vocabulary of 6-8 words only as in "Very Fine is My Valentine"
•Try to write a Tender Buttons-style poem.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

8/9. (Feb. 9/11) Poetry and Social Struggle, or the 30s forever
I.
Lola Ridge (1873-1941): "The Ghetto" (1918); optional: Ridge in anthology; but see bio [Response: Kimberly Eisler]
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967): "I Am the People, the Mob," "The People, Yes" and "Cool Tombs & in anthology: "Fog" & :"Chicago" + audio [Penn only:]: "Fog", "Cool Tombs" and "The Windy City"; "The People, Yes" [Optional critical reading: Brian Reede on Sandburg and "bad" poetry]
Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)
"The Leaden-Eyed"
"The Congo" text/audio at PennSound  {Response: Khanh-Anh Le]
Optional further reading: Lindsay selections in anthology & PoemTalk episode on this poem]
II.Note -- image in background is from Walker Evans ...
Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980) & see MAPS discussion:  USI (1935) (LION links no longer work: log in and search) and specifically from the first section Book of the Dead [intro]: "Merle Blankenship" (and discusssion of this poem); "Absalom" (discussion); "George Robinson Blues" (discussion); "Speed of Darkness," (c. 1968)  "The Poem as Mask" (c. 1968)
[response: Amaris Cuchanski]
Alfred Hays (1911 - 1985) (with music by Earl Robinson) -- lyric to "Joe Hill" sung by Paul Robeson. Also (optional): Phil Ochs's 1968 tribute to Joe Hilll.(mp3) and lyric
Rosenfeld, "Memorial to the Triangle Fire Victims" and "The Uprising of the 20,000" in anthology sp. 30-31
John Wheelwright (1897-1940): "Anathema, Maranathma!", "Fish Food (for Hart Crane)" , "Wise Men on the Death of a Fool" on Harry Crosby  (LION links for campus only; otherwise log-in and search) Response: Caitlin Drummond

Extensions (optional)
Kenneth Fearing & MAP (1902-1961):"Green Light" "Evening Song" "American Rhapsody (4)" and Fearing in anthology;
Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972) :
"The Lions of Fire Shall Have Their Hunting"(1942)
"How to Be an Army" (1943)
"Street Corner College" (1939)
"Lonesome Boy Blues" (1952)
Picture Poem Examples , from Sleeper's Awake: 1 and 2
Joe Hill, "The Preacher and the Slave".
Genevieve Taggard, "Interior"
Woody Guthrie, "Mean Talking Blues" (youtube), "1913 Massacre" (youtube)
Elizabeth Cotten, "Freight Train": youtube, text
"Bread & Rose"; Joan Biaz and Mimi Farina sing the song <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYRcCa-ddOo>
Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) singing "The Nickel under the Foot" (realaudio) from The Cradle Will Rock at a party for Bertolt Brecht in 1936; Blitzstein labor songs
Yip Harburg & Jay Gorney (1931), "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?"; the lyric is included in the anthology; Bing Crosby version: MP3 (Penn only)

• Compare each poet in terms of familiar language/unfamiliar language: give examples.
•How does Sandburg's populism hold up in the early 21st century? What values is he articulating through his poems and what poetic devices does he use to achieve this? How about Ridge?
•Discuss Lindsay's "Congo" in terms of its political and racial forms and contents; what is the social meaning of the rhythms?
•Many of the issues around "The Congo" and its romantic primitivism are also relevant to Avatar and the The Dead Poets Society (where the poem is explicitly used: you can watch the scene here, 2:20 into the clip). If you know either of these films, discuss!
•Discuss the forms of the poems. What is the politics of the choice of forms?
•Compare Rukeyser to Masters
Some key issues to consider in this reading:
*choice of subject matter
*high culture/low culture: politics of reference/allusion
*politics of content/form/diction
*popularity/populism: complexity vs accessibility
*unintended difficulties: reading the work from the vantage of a different time
Wreading:
•Negation/Opposites: Negate every phrase or sentence in the poem or in some way substitute opposite words for selected words in the source text: "I went to the beach" becomes "I went to the office"; "I got up" becomes "She sat down"; "I will" become "I will note", etc.
•Write a political poem on a current issue.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

Tues. Feb. 16, 3pm at Kelly Writers House --
David Antin talk: "Rethinking Freud --Taking Freud out of Psychoanalysis."  Followed by a reception.

10. (Feb. 16) Retrenchment (High Anti-Modernism)
Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), "Ars Poetica" in anthology
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950): "First Fig," "Recuerdo" (mp3) {Response; Sarah Arkebauer] & "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink" (mp3) & in anthology; "What lips ..." [response: Allyson Even] [wiki page]
Louise Bogan (1897-1970): "Several Voices Out of a Cloud" and "Old Countryside" (seach title; there is a typo in the text: "unp lace able" should be unplaceable); see also "Women" and intro in anthology. Response: Alexandra Gold
Alan Tate (1899-1979). "The Ivory Tower"; [seach for] "Sonnets at Christmas" (1934) in Contrad Aiken's influential anthology; and in Rutgers anthology "Ode to the Confederate Dead". Response: Zoe Dare-Attanasio
Yvor Winters:(1900-1968) "John Sutter" (with audio),  The Slow Pacific Swell, "The Fable,"  "On Teaching theYoung," "In Praise of Calfornia Wine," & "The Marriage" in anthology Response: Laura Minskoff]
(See also Primitivism and Decadence: A Study of American Experimental Poetry (1937) & In Defences of Reason (1947) )
Further Reading (optional): Conrad Aiken, and John Crowe Ransom in the anthology
•How do these poems reflect and avert the formal inovations of modernist poetry? More genrally, dicuss the forms of these poems and the relation of their meaning.
•How do gender, ethnicity, or race figure in these poems?
•Discuss the eroticism in Millay's poems. Is she the modern woman?
Wreading:: Acrostic chance: apply a Mac Low acrostic procedure to one poem (see Experiments, #4)

Thurs. Feb. 18, 6pm KWH reading: Tomomi Adachi (Edit series)


11. No class Feb. 18: Reading ONLY: A Modernist Miscellany

•Pick your favorite poems.
•What is Jeffers's approach to the natural world.
•Detail the visual imagery in a Jeffers poem. What is the mood or psychological state? What is the theme?
•Nash and Parker would probably be considered writers of "light verse" (as opposed to the "popular" but not light verse of Millay and the "populist" verse of Sandburg.Are their poems less important or signifcant than cummings, Jeffers, Bogan, Frost, etc.?
Substitution (2): "7 up or down." Take a poem and substitute another word for every noun, adjective, adverb, and verb; determine the substitute word by looking up the index word in the dictionary and going 7 up or down, or one more, until you get a syntactically suitable replacement.
•Is Guest's "Home" white dialect?

12 (Feb. 23). Wallace Stevens and the Imagination of Imagination
Stevens in anthology. Focus: "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "The Idea of Order at Key West," and "Not Ideas about the Thing But the Thing Itself"  [Response: Rivka Fogel, Amaris Cuchanski] and "The Plain Sense of Things" (not in anthology) [Note also the PoemTalk on this poem.]
I'd like to focus the class discussion on "Idea of Order." But please post on the other poems as well.
Audio: at PenSound: "Idea of Order at Key West" and "Not Ideas about the Thing Itself ... ; video with Steven's voice of "The Snow Man." See also Jim Andrews's fantasia on the Steven's audio.
Extensions: "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" (via LION) (not required!). Al Filreis's Stevens web page.
Academy of American Poets Stevens page
•Pick your favorite Stevens poem:: describe the sound of each (use the Profiler, without necessarily filling it out). What is the relation of the sound to the poem's theme or point-of-view?
•What is the "plain sense of things" in the poem of that title?
•What is "the thing itself" in "No Ideas about the Thing But the Thing Itself"?
• In "The Idea of Order at Key West": who is "she"? What is the idea of order? What is Stevens's sense of "reality"? Compare this poem to Winters's "The Slow Pacific Swell" or to H.D. ""Oread."
•On the question of quality (give crititeria, possibly using the poem profiler): compare a Stevens poem to a Winters poem or Millay poem one by Frost or cummings (or pick youtself).
Wreading:
•Take one, two or three different poems and cut each somewhere in the middle, then recombine with the beginning parts following the ending parts.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

13 (Feb 25) African-American Modernism II

Discuss Cullen's choice of form and diction: what poltical/social/aesthetic implications are there. Contrast with Sterling Brown's and James Weldon Johnson's approach.
Discuss McKay's use of the sonnet form in "If We Must Die." McKay talks about the poem in the audio clip and about Winston Churchill's use of the poem in a speeach about the blitz. Do you agree with him that the poem is "universival" and not just related to the spefific issue of lynching that gave is its origin?
Compare "At the Carnival" to "Harlem Dancer"
Compare "Bottled" to Lindsay's "The Congo" in terms of the imagination of Africa.
Discuss the use of vernacular and choice of forms in Specer, Cowdery, and Johnson.

March 1: Myung Mi Kim at KWH at 6pm
March 3: Laura Jamarillo, Laura Elrick, and Laura Neuman at KWH at 6pm

14/15 (March 2/4). Ezra Pound: Collage and Personae
Short introduction to Pound by Charles Bernstein
Part I: anthology to p. 279; plus prose on p. 294-95 (web version of A Retrospect is somewhat longer) and "Moeurs Contemporains" at PEPC; "Cantico del Sole" at PEPC. Note: PEPC version of Hugh Selwyn Mauberly.
Sources/Discussion for "Cantico."
AUDIO at PennSound: Cantico de Sole, Hugh Selwyn Mauberly, Moers Contemporaire, The Seafarer
Optional: PoemTalk discussion "Cantico" .
Class discussion (in this order) on "In a Station of the Metro" (see also commentar), "Cantico", "Hugh Selwyn Mauberly" (sections I, II, V, Envoi), and "Moeurs"; if time, but not likely: "The Seafarer," "The River-Merchant's Wife" (commentary and other translations).
Extensions: "The Seafarer" (at PEPC)
response: Matthew Chylak
Part II remainder in anthology
Canto I commentary
Additional AUDIO: Usura/LXV
Class discussion: LXXXI (Pisan); video clip with Pound reading; see also hypertext commentary on this poem; also commentary at Modern American Poetry), CXVI (see commentary) [Response: Kimberly, Gareth]
See esp. the Modern American Poetry Page for comments on specific poem
Note: full Cantos at LION
•Does the hypertext commentary for LXXXI help or hurt?
•What's with all the reference in Pound anyway?
•What is Pound's tone in "Mauberly" and "Moeurs"; have you heard that tone before?
•What about the audio files? What impression do they make?
What is Pound's object of criticism in "A Retrospect"; what poets in the anthology would you think he would like and what poets would he not like?
What's the significance of the Epic for Pound? What's the significance of translation?
Wreading:
•Write a collage poem incorporating the poems that make up the course reading together with selected other historical or political material.
•Erasure: Take a poem and cross out most of the words on each poem, retype what remains as your poem
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

Spring Break: No classes

16 (March 16). William Carlos Williams: Word for Word
Williams in anthology. Focus on "The Young Housewife," "Pastoral," "Queen Anne's Lace," "The Botticellian Trees" [respondent: Valeria Tsygankova], "Between Walls", "Spring and All," "To Elsie" (e.g., "The pure products of America...") [Response; Sarah Arkebauer and Rivka Fogel], "This Is Just to Say" [response: Allyson Even], and the prose excepts from Spring and All.
Audio at PennSound; note at end singles of "Between Walls" and "This Is Just to Say"; also note the singles for "Queen Anne's Lace", "To Elsie"; "The Botticellian Trees,"  & vido realization of "The Great Figure" (see a staitc version here)..
Optional:  PoemTalk: Al Filreis leads a discussion of "Between Walls"
See also James Clifford on "To Elsie" & the Penn symposium on "For Elsie".
Note: LION has Collected WCW.
•How do William's thin lines work? What do they do?
•What do you make of the line breaks in Williams? Compare Williams to Masters and Robinson in terms of use of everyday spoken language.
•On the question of quality (give crititeria!): compare a Stevens poem to a Masters poem or one by Frost or Sandburg.
•Detail the visual images in your favorite poems for this week. Then detail the psychological states/evocations in these poems.
•Which poems are most like someone speaking and which the least? How does that affect the value of the poems.
Wreading Experiments:
•In imitation of Williams, write a poem with very short lines OR take a poem with longer lines from the anthology and rebreak the lines in the manner of Williams.
•Write a poem as a note on the refrigerator.
•Write a poems about a single commonplace object.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv

17 (March 18) American Dada: Arensberg, The Baroness Elsa, Abraham Lincoln Gillespie, Harry Crosby, & Bob Brown
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927 ): "A Dozen Cocktails Please" & "Appalling Heart" in anthology (p. 522); more poems at Green Integer Review and at Jacket2; extensioins: Body Sweats, Daughter of Dada page, fashion by the Baronness;   Williams on the Baronness, PIP page, Fowler bio,  3 poems
Walter Conrad Arensberg  (1878-1954) "Ing" (1917): NY Dada, in anthology, p. 521; more Arensberg here: click on link to publications, also "For Forms that Are Free" and other poems (also in Kreymborg 1917 Others anthology [scroll down])
Bob Brown (1886-1959) : bio and poems; "The Lord of Burleigh"; intro to reading machines,  The Readies:  intro -- and then look at hi-res scans starting p. 47 of the reproduced book and and esp. on-line simulation of the machine ; more Bob Brown: Words. NY Times artcle on The Readies,  critical intro
Abraham Lincoln Gillespie (1895-1950): three essays at UBU
"A PASTDOGGEREL GROWTH OF THE LITERARY VEHICLE: LANGUAGE'S RELAPPROACH MUSIC AND PLASTIC" ; four poems at Fasicle
more Gillespie from Imagining Language
and also The Syntactic Revolution (New York: Out of London Press, 1980)
Harry Crosby (1898-1929):  Selection;  "SUN-TESTAMENT" (from Charriot of the Sun, 1927); "SCORN" & "I DRINK TO THE SUN" (form Torchbearer, 1929)optional further reading: more Crosby. See also bio and poems at this Crosby web site.
Extension: Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky, 1890-1976)
Eugene Jolas from Imagining Language
•Rank the poems: favorites and least favorite.
•Summarize the formal approaches of each of the poets. Do the poets remind you of other poems read so far this semester, or poems you have otherwise read?
•What is Baronness Elsa's approach to speech/vernacular/dialect? 
•What kind of patterns do you find in Crosby?
• What is the role of neologism in Gillsepie (and if you you know Joyce's Finnegans Wake, an important influence, how does this work relate)?
• Does Brown anticiapte digital poetry with this reading machines (poetry in programmable media)?
• If you know about Dada, discuss Arensberg in the context of Dada.

March. 22: Susan Howe reading at KWH at 6:30pm
rsvp: SEATING LIMITED:  whfellow@writing.upenn.edu 
Response; Sarah Arkebauer

18. (March 23) HD (1886-1961)
note: commentaries on poems are not required!
H.D. by Man Ray (1922); H.D. in Egypt
H.D. Complete Poems at 20th C American Poetry (Penn only)
"Oread"  (on this poem) [response: Valeria Tsygankova], and "The God" (from The God, 1913-1917)
"Sea Rose" (from Sea Garden, 1916) (on this poem)
"The Islands"(from Hymen, 1921)
"Eurydice" (1925) (on the poem) Response: Trisha Low
"The Walls Do Not Fall" part one from Trilogy (c. 1940-1945) (on this poem)
Optional/futher reading/listening: 
H.D. in anthology
H.D. at PennSound 
Djuna Barnes, The Book of Repulsive Women
•Susan Friedman, “Who Buried H.D.: A Poet, Her Critics and Her Place in ‘The Literary Tradition.’” College English 36 (March 1975): 801-14. Note the date (1975). Access via library e-resources, JSTOR.
•Adelaide Morris, How to Live / What to Do: H.D.'s Cultural Poetics (University of Illinois Press, 2003): pdf 
Caroline Henze-Gongola on Lawrence Rainey & H.D. and linfo on H.D. films
H.D. web page.
MAPS page
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, from H.D.: The Career of that Struggle (Indiana University Press, 1986) 
Susan Stanford Friedman, Psyche Reborn: The Emergence of H.D. (University of Indiana Press, 1987) 
DuPlessis and Friedman, eds., Signets: Reading H.D. (University of Wisconsin, 1991) 
Robert Duncan: The H.D. Book
Elizabeth Willis, "A Public History of the Dividing Line: H.D., the Bomb, and the Roots of the Postmodern"
H.D. "Sea Poppies" and Jen Scappatone's version
•"Oread" is the perfect Imagist poem (and cited by Pound as such): discuss.
•How does H.D. use the verse line to create rhythm in her poems? Decribe the rhythmic effects of her work.
•How does H.D. change the point of view of the Orpheus/Eurydice story?
•Why Greece? What role to the Classical references have in this work. Contrast to Eliot and Pound's use of literary allusion.
•Are these poems epic or lyric? What's gender got to do with it?
•What makes HD's dialogic? What is the tone of her work?
Wreading: Take lines from "The Walls Do Fall" and reorder to created a new poem. Or write a poem in imitation of H.D.

19 (March 25) Mina Loy 
Loy all poems in anthology (see image of Brancusi's "Golden Bird," subject of Loy's poem.); "Love Songs" (1914-1917) Response: Alexandra Gold
Loy manifestos,  "Aphorisms of Futurism" (1914) at Poetry Fdn ; optional archival ms: pdf/Penn of ms of "Feminist Manifesto
Response: Trisha Low
further reading:
Wiki bio
Wolkowski's Loy page. & Daughters of Dada show page;"
"Aphorisms of Futurism" at Poetry Fdn (optional:: my performance of this at MoMA)
web versions for display (unproofed: send corrections to me!)
Carlyn Burke -- first chapter of bio plus (the whole bio is worth reading!), Tuuma && in Loy  Jacket feature
Marjorie Perloff on Loy
archival/optional: 1 pg of ms of "Love Songs"
•Discuss the eroticism in Loy's and H.D's poems. Can you think of any approach related to this in the reading so far? Describe and contrast the forms chosen.
•Discuss Loy's "Feminist Manifesto." How does "Aphorisms of Futurism" related to other futurist and modernist manifestos.
•Do a close reading of one stanza of "Love Songs"
Wreading:
•Write a poem in imitation of Loy.
•Substitution (1) : "Mad libs." Take a poem and put blanks in place of three or four words in each line, noting the part of speech under each blank. Fill in the blanks being sure not to recall the original context.

20 (March 30) African American Modernisms III: Hughes, Toomer, Tolson

•How does Hughes negotiate the blues in "The Weary Blues" -- contrast to Sterling Brown.
•For Hughes and Toomer (here we go again): discuss the relation of his poems have spoken American English. What forms do they employ? How "literary' is thier "diction" (a loaded and leading question!).
•How does the form of the poems here contribute to the content?
•Are any of these poets more or less political than the others. Explain.
Wreading:
•Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem and translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence. Or translate the poem into another literary style or a different diction, for example into -- or out of -- or into a different -- a slang or vernacular.
::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the list

21. April 1 Ted Greenwald class visit.
Note: Greenwald reads at KWH at 6pm.
Book: In Your Dreams
Web: Greenwald at EPC : from Common Sense
and PennSound
>>>Append to your ususal posts two or three questions for Ted Greenwald.

22 (April 6). The Talented Mr. Eliot
T.S. Eliot: "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock," (c. 1911) & "The Waste Land" (1922) Response: Zoe Dare-Attanasio,  Leo Amino
+ Audio:
"The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" and/or
"The Wast Land" Audio by ind. section or
"The Waste Land" (mp3 of whole poem; 30mb; some recent problems loading this)
or text/audio from Poetry Archive; or:Town Hall files
Note digital texts inked above from Bartleby and at LION.
Optional: "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (part of "The Sacred Wood"); alternate pdf file of essay
Further links: What the Thunder Said (Eliot site with full texts)
Prufrock web site: hypertext of poem, early reveiws, full text of Prufrock and Other Observations (1971) &c
Web Guide to Eliot
Deformative sound of Eliot
Further Reading:
Selected Prose, ed. Frank Kermode
B.C. Southam, A Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot
Tom and Viv (1994)
•Use the Poem Profiler to describe the mood, psychological state, and other features of several poems.
•How does "The Waste Land" relate to other collage works previously read in the class? More generally, what is Eliot doing in common with other poets read so far, what differently?
•Here is the classic potboiler question, your imaginary exam? What are the principal sources used in "The Waste Land"? Go beyond the obvious or listed "literary sources"!
•Optional reading: Discuss "Tradition and the Individual Talent" in terms of the ongoing issues that have been discussed in the class? What is the relevance of Eliot's views for modernist poetry, for American poetry, or for poetry today?
Wreading:
•Reverse the word order (word for word backward, not line for line). Rather than reverse, scramble.
•  Burroughs's fold in: Take two different pages from the source text and cut them in half vertically. Paste the mismatched pages together.

Weds., April 7: Lydia Davis at KWH, 6pm

Thurs., April 8, 6pm, KWH
A poetry reading & book party for
All the Whiskey in Heaven: Selected Poems by Charles Bernsten

23 (April 8). Second Wave Modernism I: Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff (1894-1976) Response: Khanh-Anh, Anusha
SF State Reading: MP3 at PennSound
A selection of poems (in Word); for class discusion, there is also
A shorter selection, which are the ones we will discuss, time permitting
Note: Amelia: MP3
Extensions:
the selection in anthology, EPC selections
Collected Poems at LION and Testimony vol 1 at LION & Testimony vol 2 at LION
(I have an essay on Reznikoff in My  Way: Speeches and Poems)
•How does Reznikoff differ from Eliot in respect to symbilism and literary form? Who is more difficult — Eliot or Reznikoff (that is, is there a way Reznikoff can be considered difficult)?
•Some of Reznikoff's poems are extremely short? How does scale function in these poems?
•For Reznikoff: Does is make a difference that these poems were written by a man? By a child of immigrants? By a person from a second-language (Yiddish-speaking) household. By a Jewish-American?
•Discuss the experience of hearing Reznikoff versus reading him on the page?•Re-order the poems in the Reznikoff "selection" -- discuss effect of the different order
Wreading: Take one of Reznikoff's poems and re-write in the manner of Masters or Robinson or with a more traditional form. Discuss.

Tues., 4/13, 6pm, KWH
Bob Perelman's The Alps
produced by: Sarah Arkebauer and Michelle Taransky

Thursday, April 15, 6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Live Paper Dolls: Re-visioning 'Woman'
a book arts project and panel with Sadie Stein, Allison Harris, and Katie L. Price, curated by Trisha Low

24. (April 13): Second Wave Modernism II: Hart Crane and  Samuel Greenberg
Samuel Greenberg (1883-1917)
My introduction and part two
"Enigmas", "Secrecy", "Immortality","Memory", "The Philosophique Apology" "To Dear Daniel" and "God"
Hart Crane (1899-1932) [repsonse Gareth]
*"The Bridge" (1930)-- at LION; read whole poem, if possible, but if not just go to section III "Cutty Sark; notes for, and text of, "Cutty Sark"
*"Broken Tower"
class focus: "Cutty Sark"
* extensions: video-clip of "The Bridge" (actor reading the text), View from Garretteville
* other Crane selections in anthology.
•What do Creane and Greenberg have in common; what is different?
•Describe Crane's "diction." Is this verse purple, too rhapsodic; what leads some readers to respond negative to his "excess"?
•Describe the scene and mood in "Cutty Sark." Do a close reading phrase for phrase of one stanza: what is happening formally and narratively?
•What earlier poets does Crane bring to mind, if any? How is the style of his work different?
Wreading:
Edit Crane: take passage and edit out all the oddness and poeticisims: make as straight as possibe.
Pick your own wreading experiment from the list.

25. (April 15) Second Wave Modermisms III: Niedecker
Lorine Niedecker in anthology; extensions: EPC selection;
class discussion "I Married" (note Willis on this poem at EPC) [response: Valeria Tsygankova, Laura Minskoff],& "My Life by Water" (also in EPC selection)
LN@Poetry Foundation
(optional):: 1970 reading: mp3
•Crane's is a poetry of excess, or extravagant language; Niedecker is a poet of condesnsation and elision; you might say fat vs. thin.. Discuss the affective qualities of each of these approaches to poetry.
•Compare Reznikoff and Neidecker
•Neidecker's poetry situated in the rural northern midwest. How does she create a modernist poetry with this nonurban setting?
•Is Neidecker's poetry "domestic"? Is this a helpful or reductive frame? Is it the same as saying she writes "as a woman"? Is this a helpful or reductive frame?
•Do a close reading, that is, say everything you can say, about one of Niedecker's short poems.
Wreading:
Do an imitation of Niedecker or
Pick your own wreading experiment from the list.

26. (April 20) Second Wave Modernism IV: Laura Riding
Laura Riding and on rencouncing poetry (Penn only)
"By a Crude Rotation" (via Columbia Granger); off campus
"Come, Words, Away"; off campus
"Poet: A Lying Word"; off campus
"The Wind, the Clock, the We"
"The World and I"; off campus
or go to E-resources and go to Granger's and then poem title
Response: Caitlin and Enmanuel
(I have an essay on Riding (Jackson) in My  Way: Speeches and Poems)
>Why does Riding renouce poetry?
>What does she mean by poetry as "lying" in "Poet' A Lying Word"
>What is the relation of word to world in these poems?


April 21: Tan Lin at KWH at 6pm (Edit series). Listen to my interview with Tan Lin on Close Listening at Pennsound

27. (April 22) Second Wave Modernism V: Sincerity and Objectifciation with Special Reference to Louis Zukofsky
Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978) (links to my intro):
in anthology: "A"-11; "I's (pronounced eyes), "Anew" 10, 20, 21
"Songs of Degrees" (web library only) & audio:
Songs of Degrees: 2 and 3 (2:48): MP3
With a Valentine, the 12th of February (from "Songs of Degrees") (0:15): MP3
With a Valentine, the 14th of February (from "Songs of Degrees") (0:37): MP3
Songs of Degrees 1 & 2 and Barely and widely (2:13): MP3
"Julia's Wild" (from Bottom: On Shakespeare, 1960)
Catullus & audio of 70
"A Foin Lass Bodders Me"
[Note: "Anew" 20 & 21 are also in web library: "The lines of / this new / song" and "Can mote / of sunlight"]
LZ at PennSound
Optional:
"Poem Beginning 'The' "(1927)
Al Filries leads a discssion of Anew #12 ("It's hard to see but think of a sea") on Poem Talk) (Text: Penn only)
•How do these poems relate to the previous poetry you have read this semester? Briefly sketch the form/structure of each of the poems.
•Discuss the role of sound in several of the poems.
•Are Zukofsky's homophonic (same-sound) Catullus translations really translations?
•What is the effect of Zukofsky permuations of words in "Songs of Degrees" and "Julia's Wild".
"Julia's Wild" comes from a line in Shakespeare's Two Gentleman of Verona, Act 4, Scene 4 (line 199), a part spoken by Julia:
Come, shadow, come and take this shadow up
For 'tis thy rival. O thou senseless form,
Thou shalt be worshipp'd, kiss'd, loved and adored!
And, were there sense in his idolatry,
My substance should be statue in thy stead.
I'll use thee kindly for thy mistress' sake,
That used me so; or else, by Jove I vow,
I should have scratch'd out your unseeing eyes
To make my master out of love with thee!
Discuss the poem in relation to the play or to Shakespeare.
Wreading:
Try some homophonic translations of your own, either using Catullus (you can find text on web) or other poem of your choice (you can find a number of links to poems-not-in-English on the English 62 syllabus. See Wreading Experiments list #2 for more detail.

 


28 (April 27). Second Wave Modernisms VI: George Oppen
EPC
my intro (from 1985)
PennSound
No longer available on LION
"Discrete Series"(1934) pdf; PF note: excerpts only use pdf
"Of Being Numberous" (1968) pdf: PF note: excertps only use pdf
[response Gareth]

As a final optional submission, please give your response to the course, which exercises and questions you found most helpful, what was your reaction to posting all your work to the list? What about the amount of reading required for each class? Enough? Too Much? What did you like least about the course, what most (what would you like more of, or less of)? On the listserve: what did you think about posting all work to the list as opposed to giving it prviately to the instructor? Thinking back on all the poets, list your overall favorites and state your reason for your preference. You needn't post this response to the list; if you prefer, send it directly to me.

 

Further Tracks
Popular Song
•Irving Berlin, "Slumming on Park Avenue" and audio of song featuring Ella Fitzgerald
•Cole Porter: Cole Porter peforming "You're the Top", "Anything Goes", "Sunday Morning Breakfast Time", and "Everybodee Who's Anybodee"; "Just One of Those Things"(Ella Fitzgerald); "I Get a Kick out of You" (Ethel Merman), "Night and Day" (Aksel Schiotz).
•George and Ira Gershwin and DuBoise Heywood, Porgy and Bess
How do these songs sound to you when heard in the context of this course? What is their significance, if you find any, in the context of modernist American poetry?