Charles Bernstein <charles.bernstein @ english.upenn.edu>
Teaching assistant: Robin Seguy <rseguy @ sas.upenn.edu>
Contact either of us if you have any questions.

Spring 2013
Mondays at 6
FBH 222

Introduction
Requirements
Discussion list (please subsribe)
email to list: re-wreading -- @ -- sas.upenn.edu

Note: English 269 and English 288 –– 20th Century American Poetry — and English 262 (post-1975) are the companion courses to English 62.

This syllabus is a work in progress and subject to change.

beginning of syllabus

Key E-Resouces:
Gale Literature Resource Center  
LION
Literary Encyclopedia
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Twentieth-Century American Poetry
"Further Reading" on poetics for "The Practice of Poetics"

Required Books (at Penn Book Center)
Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, eds., Poems for the Millennium Vols 1 and 2
Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp by Pierre Cabanne, tr. Ron Padgett
Recommended:
Modernisms: A Literary Guide by Peter Nicholls
The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture by Marjorie Perloff
•
class lecture in first sessions: modernist time line
a related general introduction to the radical moment of 1913 in a one-hour radio program (from Dec. 2012) by Sara Fishko: here.

1. (Jan. 14) Introduction & Yeats
Because we meet only once per week, I want to start in on the discussion of Yeats in the first meeting. Also try to do the Poem Profiler self-assessment.

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939): "A Vision" and "The Second Coming" in PM1;
___ "Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (via class e-library: password required); or on e-mule: "Innisfree," "Sailing," "Second " ; plus "The Song of Wandering Aengus "
Audio: three mp3 files:
(1)Yeats reading "Lake Isle of Innisfree" via Poetry Archive [PennSound mp3]; (2) his comments on this poem, and (3) his 1936 comments "On Modern Poetry"
Extenstion (optional):
Hamilton Camp's 1964 folk setting of the poem

Further information on Yeats, including biography and complete poems, is available from LION via library e-recources.
• Poem Profiler self-test: fill out the profiler in the abstract, to reflect your own preferences. If you have a question about the meaning of one of the terms, post it to the blog. If you like: post your self-test to the blog.
• Use the profiler on Yeats
• What is Yeats's problem with modern poetry? (Based on the 1936 sound recording.)
• What does the Lake Isle of Innisfree symbolize?
• Describe Yeats's voice.
• What qualities do you find distinctive to the recording (that you did not necessarily find in the text)?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.

NO CLASS JAN. 21 DUE to MLK HOLIDAY
We will hold a make-up class on-line with full set of posts (due Monday) and responses.
Please post responses not later than Monday morning, Jan. 21.

Moved from 3B, part  two: Romance dies hard or maybe don't die at all
Dowson Wilde
British poet Alfred Noyes (1880-1958), "The Highwayman" -- Audio: read by Noyes; setting/song by Phil Ochs (more on Ochs's version); animated/sung video from Britanica Dreams:LION Noyes bio
John Masefield (1878-1967), "Sea-Fever";   Penn audio & public audio site; from Salt Water Ballads (1902)
Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953) and Poetry Achive bio,:"Tarentella" (1932)
[archive backup: audio & text]
also at Poetry Archive
A.E. Housman: from A Shropshire Lad (1896): "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now", "When I was one-and-twenty", "With rue my hear is laden" [word file of these three poems): Oxford bio
Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) & wiki: "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae" (published 1896); "Vitæ Summa Brevis Spem nos Vetet Incohare Longam" [Jack Lemmn recites this poem in The Days of Wine and Roses (1896)
Canadian poet Robert Service's (1874(?)-1958): The Spell of the Yukon: "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (also avail. as word file); Listen to Jean Shepherd recite these poems: "McGrew" & McGee". Service web site, Wiki, Oxford[registered students should be able to access these files; please let know immediately if you have any trouble. you can also find these cuts on Spotify, Rhapsody, &c.]
Extensions (optional):
Belloc: set of poems; see esp., from A Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896): "The Hippopotamus" & "The Dromedary"; also "The World Is Full of Double Bed"
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." Wilde is from the previous generation to the other poets in this set, though younger than Swinburne and Rossetti and Tennyson. This is a prison poem written by Wilde in 1897–8, after his release and during his self-imposed exile in France and Italy; and published anonymously over his prison number, C33. Oxford intro. A brief commenary on the poem.

I would normally have assigned these poems after the French modernists, whose work is much more formally radical, but perhaps this way will allow for a great "shock of the new." Please keep that in mind in commenting on these poems.
• Go ahead, read the poems out loud.
• Discuss the politics of the form and prosody of these poets, with special reference to their being part of the modernist period. In other words, what particular political and social concerns are addressed by each poem and how does their use of form reflect that. How do they "fit" in to a period of wild formal experimentation? Any thoughts on gender issues as reflected in the poems?
•Noyes was notably anti-modernist in his attitudes toward the newly emerging radical poetry? How is this reflected in his poem (well that is apparent on the face, but still ...) and more how is his own time period reflected in spitt of what is on the face, or is it a retreat into the past? How does the poem differ from earlier English ballads? Consider this set of questions in regard to Service -- who did not necessarily express a hostility to the "new' poetry. In what way is this new world -- the Canadian wilderness -- change the nature of the ballad -- is this a more popular/vulgar ballad vs the more refined Noyes? What are the gender politics in these poems?
• Belloc was fascinated by the grammaphone. How would this have affected his poem?
•Dowson is sometimes thought of as a "decadent" poet (see PEPP def.), though he is also became a devoted Catholicism. Why decadent (hint here)? When he write "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion," what fashion is that? What is going on in this poem? How would you describe it's attitude? What is the specific historical attitude to women expressed in this poem and does it represent something novel? (Those of you who read around will discover that this poem is thought to be about the 23-year-old poets love of an 11-year old? How does affect your moral sensibilities?)
• Is poetry that is entertaining or light less important than "art" poems such as those by Yeats or Mallarmé?
• Do these poems lose their force with the passage of time? Does that diminish the aesthetic value?
If this segment was slightly later in the course, as planned, I would ask
• How would you compare these poets to the War Poets (Owen, Sassoon)?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
>> Wreading: Acrostic chance: apply a Mac Low acrostic procedure to one poem (see Experiments, #8) . Comment on results

2. (Jan. 28) French Modernisms
PEPP def. "symbolism" (via library e-resources Princeton Encylopedia of Poetry & Poetic/LION (PEPP)

No class Jan. 21.

2, part one: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé (LION/PEPC)
          
Charles Baudelaire (LION): "À une Mendiante Rousse" (1845-6), "La Muse Vénale" (1857): these two poems will be discussed in class but read also selections in PM1.
Respondents: Dane & Dylan, Daniel
Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), Un coup de dés will also be discussed in class:
_____in PM1 (both selections)
_____ "Crisis in Poetry" (full essay) -- OR-- just read the excerpt.
Respondent: Emmett & Arianna
Extensions (optional):
Baudelaire: see portrait of "La petite mendiante rousse" by Emile Roy.
______  "Be Always Drunken" tr. Arthur Symmons (cf.: O'Neill quotes in Long Day's Journey into Night; along with ref. to Dowson), "Be Drunken" tr. Bernstein
_______ Further translations of the poem at Fleursdumal.org and check links to complete
_______ . "To the reader" ["Hypocrite lecteur, -- mon semblable, -- mon frère"]
______. Essays: Salon of 1859 & Painter of Modern Life (1863)
_______. French texts
_____, "À une Mendiante Rousse" (tr. lined-up side by side)
Mallarmé, "Toute revolution est un coup de dés," Jean-Marie Straub (1977)
Mallarmé, “The Four Salutes” (original poem, 1893)
Valéry on Mallarmé via Rasula
Mallarmé & Baudelaire: translations of Poe's "Raven"; Mallarmé's book was done in collabortation with Manet.
Rimbaud, A Season in  Hell (bilingual)
• Use Poem Profiler on Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire
• What is Baudelaire's attitude toward the "muse vénale" (the venal muse) and to the "mendiante rousse" (red-haired beggar)? Does he objectify them, is he sympathetic, empathetic? In what way are these poem "modern" (subject matter? form? attitude?) Which translations do you like best, least & why?
• Contrast Yeats and Mallarmé and Baudelaire. Based on your poem profiling self-test, what does this tell you about your preferences?
• What for Mallarme is "pure poetry"? What is the "crisis" for poetry? In Un Coup de dés: what is the importance of the white space and of the layout? How would the poem be different if it was laid out in traditional stanzaic form (try that out to see)?
Wreading:
• Why does Eugene O'Neill quote Baudelaire and Dowson in the last act of Long Day's Journey into Night. Is Baudelaire a "decadent" poet? What would Baudelaire have represented in 1912, as in the play? See O'Neill excerpt here.
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Try a homophonic translation of Un Coup dés (French version linked above) (see experiments list #2). Comment on the result.
For those who know French: try translating a poem.

3. Feb. 4 French modernism part two (moved ahead from last week)
Apollinaire & Cendrars (both head notes via (via LION/Columbia Dictionary)

Apollinaire

Arthur Rimbaud in PM1 Respondent: Viktoria

Blaise Cendrars, "Prose of the Trans-Siberian" in PM1; see image of work (painting by Sonia Delaunay) at Penn Library: overview, detail, 2d detail. Alternative web-tr by Ekaterina Likhtik Respondent: Heather
Apollinaire [Guillelmus (or Wilhelm) Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky] (1880-1918), "Zone" (1912) in PM1; note: "Zone" in French
____ Alcools (1913): "Le Pont Mirabeau" (& sound files), "Clotilde," & "Annie"
____Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War 1913-1916 (1918): ."Ombre", "Horse Calligramme" in PM1; "La Colombe Poignardée et le jet d’eau" & "Lettre-Océan"; see others at UBU, but esp. "Il Pleut" (It Rains).
Respondent: Jun-youb
Apollinaire on PennSound
NOTE: In class, we will focus on "Le Point Mirabeau" and the "Calligrammes."
Extentions (optional): the remaining Apollinaire in PM1; more Apollinaire in French & another site,
Calligrammes (pdf of full book)

• Discuss "Ombre" ("Shadow") and "La Colombe Poignardée et le jet d’eau," two of Apollinaire's World War I poem, in the context of that most brutal war (looking ahead to a contrast with the UK WWI poets).
• The Calligrammes make use of visual arrangement and typography as an integral part of the poems. How does this affect the meaning or space of the poem. Compare to Mallarmé's use of white space and typogrpahy in Un coup de dés.
• How is "modernity" reflected in form and content in the poets and what makes them differerent from one another and from the group.
• Discuss the atmosphere or sensibility or mode of feeling in these poems. Use poem profiler.
• How do "Zone" and "Prose of the Transiberian" usher in the modern, new world?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading:
•Try some imitations of these poems. Or a homophonic translation based on listening to Apollinaire's reading.
•Juxtapose images and words for either of the poets (or one of the earlier poets) along the lines of Delaunay's collaboration with Cendrars.
•Make a "calligramme." Compare Apollinaire as WWI poet with the UK poets of the "Great War". Compare Apollinaire's "Le Pont Mirabeau" to Dowson's "Cynarae" — how do these love poems differ from other love poems in the section of earlier love poems you may have read.

For those who know French: try translating a poem.
• Comment on your experiments so far: useful?, and, if so, in what way?

3B: Part two: Italian Futurism (Futurism one of two)

Futurisms (via Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry Poetics / LION (PEPP))
The best critical account of the futurist and formalist poetry and art around the time of World War I is Marjorie Perloff's The Futurist Moment.

El Lissitzky and Hans Arp, Kunstimen ("Artisms") book cover, 1925.

Futurisms Part One:  Marinetti (via LION) & Italian Futurism

Marinetti (via library e-resources Literary Encyclopedia) & related in PM1: pp. 193-215; new tr. of Futurist Manifesto
(optional:My performance of "The Futurist Manifesto" and Loy's "Aphorisms" at MoMA)
Mina Loy, “Feminist Manifesto,” “Aphorisms on Futurism,” 1914 (pdf/Penn); also pdf/Penn of ms of "Feminist Manifesto). Respondent: Maddy: ppt
Images (Penn only: off campus requires you to log in, then refresh): "Parole in Liberta" (1915) also nonrestricted gif, "Vive La France," study/drawing for "Vive La France", " Zang Tumb Tuuum (see Wiki on this work)
Futurist time line;  the gang
Marinetti PennSound page
MoMA Futurist Manifesto at 100 page.
See photo of Luigi Russolo with noise makers & his noise manifesto
Carlo Carrà,  Interventionist Demonstration (Patriotic Holiday-Freeword Painting)
[Manifestazione interventista (Festa patriottica-dipinto parolibero)], 1914
•
For further reading/listenting:
Marinetti manifestoes: "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism" (1909), "We Abjure Our Symbolist Masters, the Last Lovers of the Moon" (1911-15), "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature" (1912), and "Portrait of Mussolini" (1929); "Destruction of Syntax/Words in Freedom, "War "; "Futurist Synthesis of War."
Futurism web site
Some more images and words
Futrurism and advertising
Conversation on Futurism -- Claire Bishop & Boris Groys
• Respond to the points made in Marinetti's manifesto. What are the politics of this poetry? Why does he emphasize speed, destruction, war, and the future?
• How is Marinetti's visual poetics different from Mallarmé and Apollinaire?
• What is the signficance of "noise" in this work, as for instance for Luigi Russolo?
• Once again, this is writing that comes out of the period around World War I. Thoughts?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading:
Rewrite one of the manifestos for a contemporary aesthetic position
Burroughs fold-in: Take two different pages of poetry or manifesto and cut the pages in half vertically. Paste the mismatched pages together.

3C: The Great War and Modern Memory

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915), "The Soldier" (1914) (Wiki & Oxford))
Wilfred Owen (& Oxford) (1893-1918): "Dulce et Decorum est", "Greater Love", "Anthem for a Doomed Youth" [These poems also availble via LION at library e-resources.]
Respondent: James
Siegfried Sassoon (& Oxford) (1886-1967): "Repression of War Experience" and "Blighters"
[also available at LION] Respondent: Maddy
Extensions (optional):
Sassoon, audio: "Died of Wounds" & "Attack"   (note: full Sassoon poems & bio available on LION)
Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918), Trench Poems: "Break of Day in the Trenches", “Returning, We Hear Larks", "Dead Man's Dump" (LION)

Further reading: Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
• What are the attitudes toward war reflected in these poems? How does this translate into the forms of the work. How do these poems contrast with earlier attitudes toward expressed in poems. Easy one: contrast Brooke to the others.
• How does World War I affect modernist art?
• Compare the poets this week to Apolinaire's response to WWI ... and also to love.
• Pick your favorite and least favorite poem of the poets assigned. What is the reason for your selection?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading: Translate one of the poems into a totally contemporary idiom, including references and diction. (That is, take one of the poems and imagine you were writing the "same" poem in 2006, with the current war and culture as your subject. Update the references but also the language, the diction/slang etc.)

4. (Feb. 11)

John Ashbery, Feb. 12, 2012 (receiving National Humanties Medal)
John Ashbery reading at Kelly Writers House: we meet at KWH at 630pm; we will have the second part of the class in CPCW/111 (3808 Walnuut, next to KHW). So the class will go till 9:20.
Take this chance to read Ashbery. Note also his recent book of Rimbaud translations. He has also
These readings are OPTIONAL! Just listed here for your convenience. Assigned readings for this week are below.
John Ashbery (1927 - ) (EPC page)
note extensive critical materials at Gale LRC, including intro
Hoover
Poetry Foundation page
*
"The Recital" from Three Poems, "A Wave" "Haiku": pdf
Paradoxes and Oxymorons
Chinese Whispers
"The Skaters"; Bernstein on this poem
*
Ashbery at PennSound:
"How Much Longer Will I Be Able to Inhabit the Divine Sepulcher..." (4:29): MP3; text (via LION)
Rivers and Mountains (3:57): MP3, text;
The Instruction Manual (5:28): MP3, text
"They Dream Only of America" (1:09): MP3; text (via LION)
text: "Daffy Duck in Hollywood": audio: MP3
text: These Lacustrine Cities: audio: MP3
text: Soonest Mended: audio: MP3
text Farm Implements and Rutabagas in a Landscape: audio MP3; discussion of the poem
text: And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name audio: MP3

4A. Futurism Part Two: Russian Futurism
Mayakovsky
reading: PM1: pp. 220-250
Mayakovsky images (Penn only): "A Tragedy" designed by David and Vladimir Burliuk (1914) ; Dliagolosa (For the Voice) (1923); Book. Respondent: Viktoria, James
For class: Khlebnikov's "Incantation by Laughter"(my tr.) and see also alt. translation and Roman Jakobson reading: MP3
plus focus on Kruchenyck/Larionov, Pomade (pdf & with translation and audio —go to "Exlore the Books");
respondent: Heather (Furturists other than Mayakovsky)
Mayakovsky, "Screaming My Head Off" (PM) (and listen to Mayakovsky read this poem, see alt. title "At the Top of My Voice"). Literary Encyl on Mayakovsky.
PennSound Getty Futurist page of sound files..
Extensions (optional):
Russian Futurist manifesto: "A Slap in the Face to Public Taste" (1917)
Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922), Manifestos ("We accuse the older generation ...,: "The Word as Such," "The Letter as Such"; "To "; & at UBU, Klebnikov@RussianPoetry.net
"!Futurian," "Let Them Read on My Gravestone," "On Poetry": pdf
Kruchonyk's visual and zaum poems; see also Gerlad Janecek's essay on Kruchonykh's zaum poetry
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), PennSound audio/bilingual poems
Liabov Popova (1889-1924): Constructivist Composition,  Linear Composition, "Spatial Force Construction"
Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956), Cigarette ad;  "Better Pacifiers There Have Never Been"; Mayavoksy ad for cookies; portrait of Mayakovsky
Russian avant-garde books (Getty collection of digized books) and pdfs of book
Sound files and scores for Russian futurist sound and poems: Baku: Symphony of Sirens: Sound Experiments in The Russian Avant-Garde
Markov's history of Russian futurism: pdf
Mayakovsky's long poem "About this" (1923) with Rodchenko's illustrations, in Herbert Marshall's English translation preceded by Bength Jangfeldt's essay and Marshall's own intro and endnotes.
• What is your response to these approaches to poetry? In other words, discuss the forms and significance of visual and sound poetry, and of the manifestos.
• Contrast Russian and Italian Futurism. How do the manifestos differ in orientation. A related question:
• What are the politics of this poetry? How does it connect with the Revolution of 1917?
• Khlebnikov and Kruchonyk developed a conception of "zaum" poetry (transense), using invented words. Discuss this development: is it possible to communicate with made-up words, how does zaum relate to music and to more tradtional forms of poety. Is zaum "absorptive" or does it resist the reader's absorption?
• The Russian futurists engaged in many verbal-visual collaborations. Describe the specific approaches they took and the significance of these collaborations aesthetically, politically, and socially?
• A more general question: over the past weeks, you have been readings accounts of the First World War (and now the Russian Revolution) through poems. What is the difference between such a poet's eye view (or ear view) and that of an historian or from political documents of the time?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading: create visual or sound poems or visual-verbal poems, or zaum (neologistic/made-up words) poems. Or rearrange/cut-up material from this week's reading to created your own poems.
For those who know Russian: try translating a poem.

________________________________________________________________

5. Feb. 18

5A, Part One
DADA (by Anna Barkin at LION from Princeton Enc. P/Poetics]
& Literary Encylopedia (or via e-resc)


The First International Dada Fair at Dr. Otto Burchard’s Berlin art gallery. Schlichter’s pig soldier can be seen hanging from the ceiling, while George Grosz stands at right with hat and cane
Reading: PM1 pp. 289-309, 746-48
Tristan Tzara (& see Literary Ency and LION) (1896-1963)
Tzara: "Dadaism"
Respondent: Dane
Hugo Ball (1886-1927) ; another bio
Photo; another
Dada sound poems on PennSound
•
Picabia:
Picabia poems
"Spermal Chimney" tr. Rothenberg
(extensions: Picabia books, Oxford ref.):
Respondent: Dylan
Extensions/Optional:
Hugo Ball's 1916 "Dada Manifesto"
Tzara, "Dada Manifesto" (1918)
from Tzara, "Dada Manifesto" (1918) and "Lecture on Dada" (1922) :
also "Chanson Dada" in French [extensions: Vingt-Cinq Poems]
Tzara's "Approximate Man" in French.
Raoul Hausmann: "The Art Critic" (click on image to enlarge); "A.B.C.D. Portrait of Artist", " Dada Wins!)" (1920)
Photo of Opening of First International Dada Fair (1920), Photo of Hausmann and
John Heartfield, "Rationalization Is on the March" (1927), "This is the Salvation They Bring" (1938), "Life and Events in Universal-City at 12:05 noon"; "German Acorns 1933"
Hannah Hoch (1889-1978), "Collage", "Cut with a Kitchen Knife"(detail) full image.
Excellent German lanauge Dada site.
International DaDa e-library

• Why was this work denounced as anti-poetry: write an attack and also a defense of the poetic/artistic value of the work.
• Continue discussion of surface/depth from the previous week
• How does collage operate in these works. How is collage different in poems versus visual art (e.g. Heartfield)?
• Much of this work is highly political without making direct political statement. Discuss the politics of form (collage, discontinuity, performance, manifesto) in these works.
• Dicuss the performances of Hugo Ball. In a more general way, discuss the performative nature of many of these works (at the most basic level — how does that differ from lyric poetry that one reads privately to oneself?)
• It is sometimes said that the Dadaists tried to break down the distinction between art and everyday life. How so?
•Steve McCaffery writes, "the condition described accurately corresponds with Ball’s general theories of primordial memory and the complex imbrications of the child and the irrational. Renouncing one type of institutional codification, Ball returns involuntarily to another: the Catholic Church. Ball predicts that in the conditions experienced in the world around him, art 'will be irrational, primitive, and complex; it will speak a secret language and leave behind documents not of edification but of paradox.' " Discuss.
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading: Tzara's hat: Cut up the poem into individual words (alternative: phrase, line) and put them in a hat. Reassemble

5B, Part Two — Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) in PM1, & audio of "Ur Sonata"
Respondent: Jane, Freddy
Digital images: "Blue Birds", Type Reklame, page of book collaboration
See also: Schwitters's Anna Blume (reprodiuction of German book); German text of Anna Blume; Gernam recitation of the poem
See also digital version of Schwitter's magzaine Merz

Extensions (optional) on Sound Poetry:
Steve McCaffery's brief history of Sound Poetry at Ubu and McCaffery in PM2, p. 427
McCaffery, Carnival: sight and sound (see IV. items 4 & 5, text and sound)
Henri Chopin, Fresque de l'Impalapable voix (1990)
François Dufréne, "Batteries vocales, Crirythme" (1958)
Christian Prigent, "Orgasm" (1998)
Christian Bok -- Studio 111 performance, esp. 1, 4, 6, 7 (including another Hugo Ball)
Caroline Bergvall's "About Face"
Tomomi Adachi
EPC Sound Poetry Index
Carnivocal
Ubuweb
• Compare Schwitter's, Hugo Ball, and Khebnikov in terms of poetics and the use of neologisms (made-up words).
• Try to do a close listening of one movement of the "Ur Sonata," mapping out its changes and what it might suggest to you.
• It is reported that when Schwitters first performed this, some in the audience wept? How is this possible? Is this work conceptual, intellectual, or visceral? Run the poetry profiler on the work.
• Do you see this as a work attacking "sense" (in a Dadaist way? otherwise?) or making a new kind of sound-sense?
• Has poetry gone too far with this? Is this even poetry? If this is poetry, how would you define a poem? If not, what is this? Why isn't it music? (or is is music?)
• Compare the versions of the "Ur Sonata."
• Discuss some of Schwitters other works. Compare his poetry to his visual art.
Wreading: Create a sound poem. If you have a sound editor: remix the Schwitters files. Record or rehearse your own version of the "Ur Sonata."

6. Feb. 25
6A, Part 1: Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bare by Its Viewers (Maybe)

Pierre Cabanne. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) [required text available at the Penn Book Center]
Duchamp in PM1
Duchamp collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. If you haven't seen the Duchamp at
*Bottlerack/Dryer/Hedgehog (Penn image)
Disk inscribed with puns & Penn image "Esquivons les ecchymoses des Esquimaux aux mots exquis": Let us avoid the bruises of the Eskimoes in exquisite words
& see this in context in Duchamps film, Anemic Cinema
Fountain; Penn image
Rrose Selavy (Man Ray); wiki
Search Phila. Museum of Art images for Duchamp
L.H.O.O.Q
Nude Descending a Staircase
Comb: PMA image; compare New Guinea Spirit Figure
short sound clip
"Eyechart"
"In Advance of a Broken Arm"
"Three Standard Stoppages" & "A Network of Stoppages"  (1913-1914) & discussion
Apollinere Enameled; PMA image (better detail) (1916-1917)
Étant Donnés, interior view (1946-1968)
Thumbnails of art
respondents: Jane & Dylan
Dylan:
Given Duchamp’s emphasis on change, and Dali’s disavowal of contemporary conceptual art (via happenings), do you think it is possible to take this idea too far? Can one become too conceptual? How do we feel about an artist like Chris Burden getting shot in the arm as art? Would it still be art today? What implications does it have for poetry? Do we need to write our own words or merely present the words of others as our own? If we need not valorize labor in the production of art, why should we valorize in poetry? In relation to the Chirs Burden piece, think about Duchamp’s Deferment in PM1. Burden was an artist working during the Vietnam War.

Extensions (optional): : interview with Duchamp (may not work) and another interview; Duchamp web site: Tout-fait (may not work); Marchel Duchamp.org
Duchamp at UBU
The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, Da Capo Press.
From Marjorie Peloff's 21st-Century Modernism, Chapter 3: The Conceptual Poetics of Marcel Duchamp [ .pdf | .rtf ]
• In what way might Duchamp's work be relevant for modernist poetry (apart from the immediate fact of his own literary work)? Discuss in terms of both the ready-mades and the Large Glass.
• Discuss the approach to art that Duchamp takes in the Cabanne interview: is he doing away with art or shifting the frame of what we take to be be art?
• How does the voyeurism work in "Étant Donnést"; compare the use of the "gaze" with the Baudelaire's portraits of woman or other poems in which this issue is relevant.
• Discuss the small fetish objects on display at the museum, with special reference to the significance of the writing/inscriptions.
• Perloff writes, "Duchamp’s term for the all but imperceptible difference between two seemingly identical items was, the term infrathin, a term closely linked to what Duchamp also called deferral or delay." Discuss how this relates to Duchamp's work (for example his puns) or more generally to poetry and poetics.
Wreading: Create a poem or collage based on cut-ups and excerpts from the Duchamp Dialogues.

6B,  Part Two: Surrealism (PEPP/LION)
Breton & Eluard, seated
PM1 338-341, 465-485, 492-95:
André Breton, Philippe Soupault, Robert Desnos
French: "Médaille de sauvetage"
respondents
Breton: Rivky, Dane
Soupault: Daniel
Extensions:
Surrealism manifestos [Penn only] & Literary Encyc
André Breton and Leon Trotsky, “Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art” (1938)
• Describe visual images in two poems. What is the relation of the visual image to the poem's theme or point-of-view?
• What is surrealism?
• Use profiler on one or more poem
• Is there a politics to this poetry?
• Do you see a connection between Surrealim and Dada or Futurism (focusing on the poems of each movement)?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading:
Substitution (1): "Mad libs." Take the poem or other source text 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.
Substitution (2): "7 up or down." Take a poem or other text 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. (Cf.: Lee Ann Brown's "Pledge" & Michael Magee's "Pledge" (go to p.37 of pdf of Morning Constitutional) or Clark Coolidge and Larry Fagin, On the Pumice of Morons.) If you find this too pre-determined, remember that that may be the value, your lack of control. However, a "liberal" alternative: pick any one of the 7 words up or down.   
Substitution (3): Find and replace. Systematically replace one word in the source poem with another word or string of words.  Perform this operation serially with the same source text, increasing the number of words in the replace string. 

Rivky's Questions/Suggestions
Un chien andalou
-Do you believe that the Surrealist methodology really amplifies reality/the experience of art? - Contrast Dadaism and Surrealism. Would it be fair to view Dadaism as reactive when compared to Surrealism?
- The Surrealists strove to enhance the public’s mind through their art. Yet, in some cases, the Surrealists created art that could only be appreciated by other artists. Do you think Surrealism is elitist?

Further Reading/French Poetry (optional):
Paul Valéry, Alfred Jarry, Max Jacob, & Francis Ponge in PM1. [On Ubu Roi]
Valéry's "The Cemetery by the Sea" (tr. Charles Guenther), tr. by Cecil Day Lewis
Ponge, "L'orange"
André Breton and Phillippe Soupault Les Champs magnétiques (Magnetic Fields), 1920
Georgio De Chirico, Hebdomeros
Guy Debord on Dérive and on Détournement
Society of the Spectacle Knabb tr., Black & Red tr. by Freddy Perlman, (another site for this), Nicholson-Smith // French version // film (in French) English subtitles
Jacques Rouboud and Anne-Marie Albiach in PM2
Olivier Cadiot's Red, Green, & Black, tr. Charles Bernstein and Cadiot
The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry, ed. Paul Auster;
The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, ed. Mary Ann Caws

For those who know French: try translating a poem.

March 4: No Class (Spring Break)

Virtual make-up class
Part One: Concrete and Visual Poetry


PM2: pp.304-316
Concrete and Visual Poetry selection
Tom Phillips (PM2); see also Tom Phillips, Humument home page


14B, Part Two: Digital
Cayley and Rosenberg in PM2
Rosenberg in Poetry after 1975 / boundary 2
On Visual Poetry: Browse; pick and commoent on your favorites
On Digita library: Browse through the list, but start with
Andrews's "On Lionel Kearns"
Stefans's "Dreamlife," and "I Know Man"
Chang's "Dakota"
bp Nichols' early computer poems
and then Glazier's "Territorio Libre"

• What are the distinctive features of this work
• Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading: Make your own digital poems or create a blueprint/plan for a digital poem you would like to make

Rilke, 1904
Rainer Maria Rilke & intro (LION) (1875-1926) in PM1 (2 selections)
PM1: pp.263-265; Lasker-Schuller, "To the Barbarian" (p. 270), Benn & Trakl (pp. 277-285)
"Torso of an Archaic Apollo"
respondent: Rivky
In class we will focus on Rilke, Duino Elegy #1; see notes by Bernstein and Perloff (just the beg. of the Perloff essay)
Extensions (optonal): RILKE: "Duino Elegies" (bilingual, multiple translations); Rilke in German;  "Letter to a Young Poet,"  
Elsa Lasker-Schuller
Benn: "Little Aster" in German; more poems
Benn audio
Some related images: Edvard Munch, "The Scream" (1893), "Anxiety"
Optional: art background: Paul Vogt and Ita Heinze-Greenberg. "Expressionism." Grove Art Online.•
• Pick your favorite and least favorite poems (from the course) since the last time you made such a list. Give reasons for your selection.
• Are these poets -- the ones assigned for this unit -- more expressive than the other poets, or is that the approach to expression is different? What does each poem "express"?
• Expressionism is sometimes understood in terms of depth rather than surface; yet Rilke might be said to be depthless. Discuss the surface/depth distinction in terms of the poems.
• Pick two poems and give a brief summary of their content. How is this summary different from the poem?
Wreading: Reverse the order of the poems, line for line or run the whole poem backword. Next: don't reverse but scramble. Comment on result.
Try one of the translation experiments or try to do your own word-for-word translation.
For those who know German: try translating a poem.

7B, Part 2:Antonin Artaud, Federico García Lorca

Artaud via LiteraryEnc
____in PM1&2
Artaud sound files at UBU
Exensions: "To Have Done with the Judgement of God"
Respondent: Matt
Lorca in PM1 (note: "Ode for Walt Whitman" in Spanish; a web selection of Lorca ; "Ode to Walt Whitman" (Poetry Fdn)' "Dear Lorca"
respondents: Emmett, Rivky
Extensions:
Lorca on "The Theory and Function of the Duende" (c. 1933)
Lorca tr. by Paul Blackburn (bilingual)

The Passion of Joan of Ark (Dryer) with Artaud: not this is a silent film; the soundtrack has been added; best to watch without sound!. Vimeo seems to have a better print.
• Pick a poem of each poet give a brief summary of its content, taking into account the way the form suggests content in these works. In other words, treat the form and style as part of the "content" for the purpose of answering this question.
Wreading: Lexical translation: Take a poem in a foreign language -- "Ode for Walt Whitman" -- that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate it word for word with the help of a bilingual dictionary. (Rewrite to suit?).

Matt Artaud questions: 1. Do you think Artaud's poetics fall under the category of modern "performance art?" How might Artaud's ideas about art differ from the conventions of performance and conceptual art? To what extent is Artaud a poet? 2. The sense of shock and disbelief is central to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty. However, is it possible to become completely desensitized to the wild theatrics, thereby weakening the intended effect of the Theatre of Cruelty?

Emmett Lorca questions about Duende: 1. How is this similar to some of the other poetics we have encountered? 2. Is it connected to any folk movements? 3. Politically—could the duende be a tool for nationalism, small n? Because each nation/ people could presumably have its own, because of the autochthonous nature of the duende. Or did Lorca think it was universal? 4. Why is the duende black?8. March 18
Mother Russia, Father USSR: Russian Poetry 2 (in/around/after Futurism)



from M. Gor’kii et al, eds, Belomorsko-Baltiiskiii Kanal imeni Stalina ([Moscow]: OGIZ, 1934) [from An Account of the Construction of the New Canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea]; photo poss. by Rodchenko. Thanks to Joshua Kotin.

video of Nadezhda Mandelstam talking *in English* about Osip Mandelstam from around 1973: YouTube.

•Osip Mandelstam (Gale) & Acmeism
Mandelstam in PM1: pp. 390-397; Four Mandelstam poems: English (Penn only (Russian);  2 poems tr. Yankelvitch/High (read note on poems too); the Stalin epigram, (another tr.); "Ode to Stalin" (optional: Clarence Brown on this poem via JSTOR)
"Acmeist Manifesto" (JSTOR) (1917) (PEPP & Literary Encl) on Acmeism)
Respondent: Adrianna, [Rivky, Emmet]
Optional reading: "Conversation about Dante"; also: "Octaves," Cigale tr.; Kline
Mandelstam audio
•Marina Tsvetayeva in Literary Encl    & in PM1
•Anna Akhmatova in PM1; Akmatova audio; Akhmatova@RussianPoetrey.net
•Danill Kharmes & Literary Enc (1905-1942): Intro/CB, Realpoetik, from The Blue Notebook, Alex Cigale's tr., poems, "31 plays," another site
*
Arkadii Dragomoshchenko in PM2
Jacket2 obit
wiki
ATD on PennSound
Dragomoshchenko in 99 Poets/1999
PIP bio and tr. by Genya Turovskaya
"Sentimental Elegy" from Description, tr. Lyn Hejinian and Elena Balashova (Sun & Moon Press,1990)
Hejinian/Dragomoshchenko dialog via Jacki Ochs's Exchange (Bomb, 1994; JSTOR)
PMC symposium (1993) & AD's "Phosphor"
from Dust and another section at Google preview on Dalkey Archive Press page for book.
on Creeley
99 Poets
selected poems
A fuller context for Dragomoschenko's work would include his fellow Petersburg "metaphysical" poet (as this semi-underground group was called), Alexei Parchikov. In constrast, there were the "Moscow Conceptualists," in particula and Dmitri Prigov and Lev Rubinstein.
Dmitri Prigov
bio
PennSound
Jacket poems
interview
Edmond on Prigov
Versographies,
Lev Rubinstein (born 1947):
Jacket
Alexei Parshchikov (1954-2009)
Arkadii Dragomochenko on Parschikov
"If I'm to Peddle Stories" (Penn only 99 Poets / 1999)
Chamblis-Ostashevsky-tr_2009 (Penn only)
Dalkey Anthology, tr. F.D. Reeve (pp. 180-189)
"Oil"
Platt/Perelman draf tr. (Penn only)
see also
Elena Shvarts (1947-2010, Leningrad/St. Petersburg)
Stephanie Sandler on Shvarts
Guadian obit
Poems:
from Dalkey Anthology, tr. Margo Shohl Rosen, pp. 35-41
Memorial Candle
Conversation with a Cat
A Child in the Ghetto Surrounded by Letters
Translated by Stephanie Sandler    
Free Ode
A Portrait of the Blockade
Translated by James McGavran
Aleksandr Skiddan (1965- )
The Resistance of/to Poetry (99 Poets / 1999)
from Red Shifting (Ugy Duckling Presse)
Forward interview
Skiddan int. Leonard Schwartz @ PennSound
"Poetry in the Age of Total Communication" (Nypoesia termp. down; if so try this)
Skiddan at PennSound

•Do you see a common approach in Mandelstam, Tsvetayeva, and Akhmatova? The work is often thought of in terms of fate or politics, but how about the form? How does this work relate to Russian Futurism and to the French ("Symbolist") poets you've read so far? Does the work relate to Dada, surrealism, or expressionism? Is it more radical or conservative (and what criteria elicit for these characterizations)? Mandelstam addresses this in his Acmeist Manifesto: how do these poems reflect the views in that manifesto or how does he distinguish the work from Symbolism and Futurism? Is it significant that Mandelstam is Jewish?
•Is Kharmes comic, ironic, tragic, mystical?
•Dragomochenko is a contemporary poet, but do you see connections to the earlier Russian poets, for this week or the Futurists? How would you describe his sensibility
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading:
Recombine or reorder the lines within a Dragomochenko poem.
Recast one of the modernist Russian poems into something that refers to your own life.
For those who know Russian: try translating a poem.

9. (March 25) Our America
José Marti
Introduction by Ernesto Grosman (from 99 Poets/1999)
The Americas -- Wikepdedia; short poet bios
José Marti (Cuba), "Our America"
.Rubén Dario (Nicaragua) (Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, 1867-1916): "To Roosevelt"; poem in Spanish (PM1) & tr. ; poems  in Spanish
Vicente Huidobro (Chile) (wiki bio) (note in two places in PM1):
"Altazor" canto VII (1931)
performed by Jaap Blonk: MP3; performed by Juan Angel Italiano: YouTube
Spanish: "Ars Poetica," "Altazor"; more here; another :site
"Cow Boy" and it's appearance in French in Tzara's Dada (1918)
César Vallejo (Peru) (PM1), from Triilce  [Trilce in Spanish], [other poems in Spanish] (also see Lit Ency)

Nicolàs Guillén (Cuba) (PM1) (Lit encly bio); excerpts The Daily Daily;  poems in Spanish;"Sensemaya" (tr. Langston Hughes), bilingual pdf; wiki commentary; Silvestre Revueltas 1937 orchestral (wordess) version of the poem via YouTube – Gustavo Dudamel and Leonard Bernstein; see also Sid Robinovitch's choral version with its intense rhythmic chanting on YouTube; in sharp contrast Vivienne Barry's claymation verison with musical setting by Horacio Salinas: Vimeo

Pablo Neruda [Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto] (1904-1973) (Chile) (PM1); also "Ode with a Lament"; optional: poems in Spanish; "Explaining a Few Things" (bilingual)
Poetry Fdn, Poets.Org
Maria Sabina (Mexico) (PM1 & PM2); Henry Munn on Sabina
Sabina documentary (with her singing in beg.) & part 2; Rothenberg performs Sabina: MP3, Anne Waldman's "Fast Speaking Woman" based on Sabina: MP3
Smithsonia CD with stream excerpts
Cecilia Vicuna (Chile/US) (PM2)
Jorge Santiago Perednik, "Poetarzan"
Further (optional) reading:
Subcommander Marcos et al, ch. 14, Fourth Declaration Lacandon Jungle, 78ff.
Roberto Tejada, In Relation: The Poetics and Politics of Cuba's Generation-80
Oliverio Girondo
Octovio Paz, poetry fdn
• Discuss Marti's "Our America" in the context of these poems
• Does it make a difference that these poems were written in Latin America? What would happen to the poems if you thought they were written by a European or North American?
• Discuss the use of myths and other "fourth world" features in these poems (e.g. relation to indigenous cultures, cultures that do not use writing systems, non-"Western" cultures).
• Pick your favorite and least favorite poem of the poets assigned. What is the reason for your selection (use Profiler)?
• Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading:
• Try any of the translation exercises: lexical or homophonic if you don't know Spanish & if you do know Spanish, do a translation.
• Eliminate all personal pronouns or self-reference in a poem.
• Write a version of one of these poems translated into a contemporary social/historical situation

10. (April 1): Maggie O'Sullivan and UK Poetry
We will meet at Kelly Writers House at 6pm for the Maggie O'Sullivan reading. After a break/reception, O'Sullivan will join us for the discussion.
Assigned book: Body of Work, her selected, will be available from the Kelly Writers House by the beginning of March.

Additional reading: Tom Raworth, Maggie O'Sullivan, J.H. Prynne in PM2
Veronica Forrest-Thomson, "Cordelia"
Tom Raworth on PennSound and at EPC
O'Sullivan on PennSound
O'Sullivan, "Red Shift" in 99 Poets
O'Sullivan books at Eclipse
Bob Cobbing, Sockless in Sandals: Collected Poems of Bob Cobbing, Vol 6, introduction by Peter Finch (1985)
•
W.H. Auden (poets.org) and PF bio
"Musee des Beaux Art" & wiki & audio
"In Memory of W.B. Yeats" & audio
"The Unkown Soldier"
"Stop All Clocks"

11. April 8
Robert Grenier and Stephen Ratcliffe reading at 6pm at KHW. We will stay at KWH after the reading to resume our discussion. Please read up on the two poets!

11A, Part One: A Few Brazillian Poets

Carlos Drummond de Andrade in PM1, "The Dirty Hand" (pp. 657-58)
_____, "In the Middle of the Way"
_____, "In the Kingdom of Poetry" or at PEPC
_____, "The Bomb"
respondent: Adriana, Vikotria
Haroldo de Campos in PM2
____ "Circulado," with music by Caetano Veloso (alt. file in protected folder) & Veloso on this song & concrete poetry (NOTE: the format is prose for original and translation).
______Three concrete poems at UBU
___"Galaxias"
Décio Pignatari, Bebe Coca-Cola (1957); more at UBU
Noigandres (Augusto de Campos, Decio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos), “Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry” (1958)
Régis Bonvicino, "Blue Tile", "Prose," PennSound audio #s4 (Talvez), 7 (Me Transformo), 14 (Where), and 16 (Blue).
João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999): Three poems
Respondent: Synae
Paulo Leminksi: untitled poem
Extensions (optional):
Josely Vianna Baptista, one poem from 99 Poets/1999
Carlos Drummond de Andrade in PM1 (remainder); also three poems (bilingual)
Statements on Brazilian poetry from 99 Poets/1999 by de Campos and Bonvicino
De Campos: Selection of Poems; Charles Bernstein on de Campos, Roland Greene on de Campos;  Galáxias site. Sound file: Calcas Cor de Abobora
Marjorie Perloff, "Concrete Prose": Haroldo de Campos's Galáxias and After
Mary Ellen Solt on Brazillian Concrete Poetry
Oswald de Andrade:
my intro
"Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brazil" (Brazil Wood Manifesto) (1924)
Anthropophagite Manifesto ("Manifesto Antropófago") (1928) anothter tr; also Mary Ann Caws tr.; Leslie Bary's tr with full glosses (JSTOR)
Haroldo de Campos of Anthropophagy: JSTOR
Prescursor: Sousandrade (1832-1902"Wall Street Massacre" with notes by De Campos bros.: JSTOR
*
Caetano Veloso: a few songs (restricted access)
Jorge de Lima in PM1
*
• Write in some detail about two or three poems. Detail any literary "devices" used (see Profiler).
Deformation: Use the "Meaning Eater" engine to deform the text of a poem. Use a sound editor to scramble, resound a sound file of a poem.

11B, Part Two: Negritude: Senghor, Césaire, Damas
Césaire (bio/interview via Gale)
Senghor, Césaire, Damas in PM1, pp.559-581, 736, 751, and PM2 p. 73-4
Césaire: Five poems from Soleil cou coupé (1948)
Extensions (optional): interview; listen to Clayton Eshleman read his Césaire translation; Césaire in French
Respodent: Synae (Césaire) Jun-youb (Damas)
• Pick your favorite and least favorite poems since the last time you made such a list. Give reasons for your selection.Use profiler.
• Contrast the poems read today with the poems from the past two recent classes -- Surrealism and Lorca/Artaud, allowing the strong connection between the two.
• Imagine Damas's "SOS" was written but a white women from the midwest. Would that change the meaning of the poem?
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading:
• If you know any French, try a bit of tranlsation of Césaire
• 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 not"; etc. As an alternative, take a poem and change what it says line for line or phrase for phrase; not opposite, just different.

(via Gale) (1892- 1978) & Synthetic Scots

12B, Part Two Dialectic of Dialect: Jamiaca

This set of readings extends from the MacDiarmid, so feel free to go back and forth between MacDiarmid and Bunting (who were friends and contemporaries) and Bennett and Smith and McCaffery.
respondent: Matt
Louise Bennett, "Bans O' Killing" and "Colonization in Reverse";  audio of "Colonization" (extensions: "Dutty Tough" audio). Litalive Bennett page.
Michael Smith, "It a Come" and " Mi C-Yaan Believe It" (youtube audio) (short bio) (see also poems here & another youtube). (Extensions/optional: Linton Kwesi Johnson: Sonny's Lettah (text) & Fite Dem Back (text)
Steve McCaffery, "The Kommunist Manifesto or Wot We Wukkers Want": mp3 & text. This is a translation into Yorkshire dialect of Marx & Engels' Communist Manifesto
• Discuss the formal, stylistic, sonic, prosodic, ideological, nationalistic, and political implications of these works.
• (Bennett:) Is humor an appropriate ingredient for serious poetry? Some might say that Bennett is a popular performer not a significant poet. Does it make sense to include her on this syllabus, along with another Caribeean poet of polymathic range such as Césaire?
• Is this minor literature (in Deleuze and Guattari's sense)? (For those who may know their book on this subject.)
• Compare MacDiarmid and Bunting, or Bunting and Smith
• Listening to additional cuts of Smith: what is the connection between his "dub poetry" and Reggae, or, to ask this another way, what is the relation of the poems to the songs?
Wreading:
Use the dialect engine to translate poems from the syllabus into one or several "dialects." Or do this just by the accent you give in reading the work out loud.
Create standard English versions of some of these poems.
Further readings/listenings: Kamu Brathwaite

13. (April 22) LAST CLASS

Note: LAST CLASS
As a final post, please give your response to the course, focussed primarily on the poetry and poetics, but also the class and listserve discussion of the poetry and poetics, the web-based syllabus, PennSound, and the wreading experiments. Chart changes in your thinking about poetry and poetics from before the class began to now. Thinking back on all the poems read and heard, discuss/revisit some of the work that stays with you the most. If you were to change any part of the syllabus, what would you change? One final question (after Robert Duncan) and specifically in respect to the focus of this course: What don't you know? What would you like to pursue?

13A, Part One: Exile: Turning without Return

Paul Celan (& Gale bio):
PM2 (three entries)
"Todesfuge" audio (and other poems)  &  (commentary)
Sprachglitter (optional: commentary)
Unrestricted source for Celan sound files and poems: easier to use!
Charles Bernstein, "Celan's Folds and Veils" (from Textual Practice 18:2, 2004) on "Todtnauberg"
•
Jabès, Adonis, Darwish, in PM2 Adonis & Darwish in 99 Poets Abdelwahab Meddeb in 99 Poets
Respondent: Synae
Celan Extensions (optional):
pdf: "The Meridian" (1960), "Conversation in the Mountains" (1959), Breman prize speech (1958), tr. R. Waldrop; (note the book) (supplemental: outakes from the speech) & excerpts from the drafts.
Joris on Celan
Joris on Celan (YouTube of Harvard lecture)
Joris on "Todtnauberg" (essay)
Extensions/futher reading (optional): Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, from Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (pdf)
• How do these poets respond to exile? What's poetry got to do with it?
• What is Celan's relation to his "native" language or "mother tongue" and his other languages? In what way is Celan's relation to German expressed in his work?
• How does the sound-shape of "Todesfugue" relate to its meaning?
• Is my Celan essay over-reading?
• Use the poem profiler on Celan
•Compose one question for the seminar, based on the reading.
Wreading:
Try some homophonic translations of "Todesfugue"
Re-order "Todesfugue": lines in reverse direction; reverse direction of the words. Erase half the words to create another poem.
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.

13B. Part Two: Identities: Case Studies

respondondent: Freddy
Samuel Beckett
in Literary Encl
PM2
"Imagination, Dead, Imagine" (Penn only) or public site
audio of Beckett reading from Watt (1965)

Monique Wittig,
Wittig ("Le Corps Lesbien") in French original

Dubravka Djuric, "Post-Communist Poetry" from 99 Poets/1999
___, "Disordering" & other poems (translationa follows original)

Nicole Brossard
"Figure"
"The Throat of Lee Miller," from Museum of Bone and Water
>her reading of the poem at PennSound: "Le Cou de Lee Miller" (3:31): MP3
Brossard in PM2 (note volume 2!!)
"Poetic Politics" (Gale) in The Politics of Poetic Form
Brossard in 99 Poets
How(2) Brossard interview
Extentions (optional):
Janice Williamson interview of Brossard: Gale
Brossard at PennSound

Fred Wah
Pictograms from the Interior of BC (start with opening 20 pages, read on as possible)
Wah Close Listening interview MP3 -- on his PennSound page (and optional listen to more there)


• Use the Poem Profiler to describe the mood, psychological state, and other features of several poems.
Wreading: Cut-ups: take lines from these poems for this week and re-order them into a new poem. Larger project: do a cut-up from all the poems we have read so far

Wreading/Dicussion:
Here is Wikipedia's definition of ekphrasis: "Ekphrasis or ecphrasis is the graphic, often dramatic description of a visual work of art. In ancient times it referred to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word comes from the Greek ek and phrasis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, verb ekphrazein, to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name." To some extent, both Wah's and Brossard's poems are ekphrastic. Think about their versions of ekphrasis and compose an ekphrastic poem. Choose one part of the definition, and exaggerate it in your experiment. Try to make it so extreme that anyone could guess which part you've chosen.
Here are some questions on each:
Brossard:
- Who is Lee Miller? How does knowing about her, or knowing what she looked like change your interpretation of the poem?
- Describe the form of this poem. What is the most important formal "unit" in it? The line? The page? Something else?
- Related question: describe the use of repetition in this poem. How do the repeated items develop and change as the poem progresses?
Wah:
- Describe the relationship between the images and the text. Who is/are the speaker/s? - What kind of tone do these poems have? What other texts would you compare them to? What cultural or literary sources do you think this language comes from?
- Read this short blog post by the poet Gary Barwin and respond: Barwin suggests "a new 'translation' of Wah's book in light of the new understanding, the changed relationship with Native history," the possibility that "a Native writer will write a book 'transcreating' images from non-Native imagery" or "non-First Nations' writers ... rewrit[ing] the book using non-First Nations pictograms." What do you think?


All material for this class should be handed in by the Sunday following the last class. If you plan on submitting work after that time, please email; extensions are possible. For those who might like to do supplemental work for the class: by all means, expand on subjects already approached or pursue any of the "extensions."NOTE: supplemental work is not required for the course.

Extensions: Alan Golding on PM
PM launch reading at KWH on PennSound

Bonus Track One:
Fernando Pessoa: "Autopsicografia"

Bonus Track Two: Italian poetry modern and contemporary
Eugenio Montale, Guiseppe Ungaretti in PM1
Amelia Roselli in PM2
Elio Pagliarani at PennSound
Il Novissimi, Cesare Pavasse, Eduardo Sanguineti, Antonio Porta, Adriano Spatola, Luigi Ballerini, Andrea Zonzotto, Milli Graffi, Emilio Villa, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Milo de Angelis, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Giulia Niccolai, Antonia Pozzi, Nanni Cagnone
Bibliography

Bonus Track Three: UK Now and Then
Auden; Sitwell in PM1
Raworth, O'Sullivan, Prynne in PM2
O'Sullivan, "Red Shift" in 99 Poets and audio
Veronica Forrest-Thomson, "Cordelia"
Further reading:
Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"
Auden, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"
Larkin, "This Be the Verse"
Dylan Thomas, sound files
Out of Everywhere: An Anthology of Contemporary Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK, ed. Maggie O'Sullivan
Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, ed. Keith Tuma
Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970, ed. Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain Bonus Track

Four: Vienna Group
PM2. pp/ 115-126
Jandl, "Scenes from Real Life"
Jandl at Ubu
Jandl's "schtzngrmm" (sound poem)
poems/audio at lyrikline

Bonus Track Five: Caribbean Poetry
Kamau Brathwaite
Derek Walcott
Louise Bennett
Claude McKay
Michael Smith
Eduardo Glissant
Malcolm de Chazal
Linton Kwezi Johnson

Bonus Track Six: Brecht & Weil

Bonus Track Seven: China
Chinese Poetry

2008 Visit of Li Zhimin
PennSound page
Reading:
Li Zhimin -- KWH lecture on Chinese & Western poetry, published in Internationa; Literary Quarterly, 2010.
Li Zhimin -- a selection and in Chinese
Mao Zedong (1893-1976),  selected poems
Xu Zhimo (1897-1931), Ji Xian (b. 1913), Gu Cheng (b. 1956): pdf from Michelle Yeh anthology.
"Mity Poets" PM2  pp. 752-769, esp:
     Bei Dao (b. 1949), "The Answer" and  Bei Dao in Jacket;
     Haun Saussy on Bei Dao's "Huida/The Answer" and Tiananmen Square
     Mang Ke "Apeherd" (PM2)
     Gu Cheng (in Yeh pdf above)
      Shu Ting in PM2 and also her work in the Michelle Yeh anthology: pdf here
Language/Original poets:
      Yunte Huang, Intro;
       Original Manifesto;
       Huang Fan (b. 1963), "Poetry's New Shore,"
       Che Qianzi (b. 1963), "Flower of Two Persons" (1990);
       Yi Cun (b. 1954), "A Poet's Remark on a White Bird in Winter"
Yunte Hunag, from SHI
Ma Lan, selection
Xu Bing: "Art for the People" & "New English Caligraphy" (Square word calligraphy), "Your Surname Please"
Xi Chuan and here
Yao Feng
• Mao is considered one of modern China's greatest poets: how is his role as a major (and, to put it mildly, troubling) political leader and revolutionary reflected in his poetry? What role does poetry play in his political leadership? Is there a conflict between being a lyric poet and Mao's political ideology and actions.
• Discuss Huang's approach to translation, taking up our discussion of translation in the second class.
• Compare the "Misty," "Language/Original Poets," and Li Zhimin. Do a close reading of a poem from each group, perhaps using the poem profiler. Discuss the politics of poetic form in the poems (how the chosen forms reflect political or social perspectives).
• Li Zhimin will be talking about the influence of Western poetry on modern Chinese poetry. One example (somewhat negative in his view) is Xu Zhimo's idealization of Cambridge Uniiveristy, But the influence is reflected in the selection of contemporary poets. What qualities in these poems reflect a distinctly Western and also a distinctly non-Western approach to poetry?
Wreading:
Write imitations of a couple of the poems in this week's reading. In other words, change the subject or place but write a poem in a manner as close to the "original" as possible.
For those of you who know any Chinese at all: do new translations of the poems for which the Chinese is provided

BONUS TRACK 8
New Zealand/Australia
Alan Curnow
Wystan Curnow
Michelle  Leggott
Ern Malley and Angry Penguins (& wiki): the complete poems
John Tranter
John Kinsella
Alan Loney
Javant Biarujia: Tenaraic; interview