Thurs, Sept 30 & Tues, Oct 5 - the rise of imagism

introductions to imagism

• notes on imagism from Amy Lowell's Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917)
• audio: an introduction to imagism read by Al Filreis
• passage on imagism in the Norton headnote to Ezra Pound from "At that time" on p. 346 to "...was a force rather than a picture" on p. 347 (Norton)
• imagism briefly defined
• on the antimodernist's view of imagism
• the "objective" photographic art of Alfred Stieglitz
• headnote to H.D. (Norton)
  readings in imagism
  
• H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], "Sea Rose" (Norton)
• H.D., "Garden" (Norton)
• H.D., "Oread" (Norton)
• imagism per Edward Dahlberg
• Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro" (Norton)
• William Carlos Williams, a translation of a poem by Li Po
• Pound, "The Encounter"
• Richard Aldington, "Daisy" (1915)
• William Carlos Williams, "Lines"
• audio: Al Filreis and Shawn Walker on Williams's "Lines"
• Williams, "The Great Figure" (Norton)
• Charles Demuth, The Figure 5 in Gold: oil on composition board; 35 1/2 x 30 in. (90.2 x 76.2 cm). The painting was said by Demuth to have been inspired by Williams's "The Great Figure."

  Charles Demuth's The Figure 5 in Gold a painting said to have been inspired by Williams's "The Great Figure"

• Williams, "so much depends" or "The Red Wheelbarrow"
• Roy Harvey Pearce on Williams' "so much depends"
• on Williams's "so much depends" in relation to Duchamp's idea of the readymade, a audio presentation with eleven "slides"
• Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain"
• another image of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" (1917), a readymade
• Marcel Duchamp: a review of a 1999 exhibit summarized Duchamp's "readymade" art and the art of replication
• Duchamp, eye chart (1919?)
• The Armory Show
• Susan Sontag on modernism
• Williams, "The Quality of Heaven"
• Williams, "Flowers by the Sea" (Norton)
• video: Al Filreis on "Flowers by the Sea" with a reading of the poem by Shawn Walker
• Williams, "Between Walls"
• audio: Williams reading "Between Walls"
• Carl Rakosi, "ZZZZZZ"
• Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways...Blackbird"
• Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar" (Norton)
• Stevens, "Study of Two Pears" (Norton)
• Ernest Hemingway, from the story "On the Quai at Smyrna," In Our Time (1925)
• audio: George Blaustein reads from Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River," a vignette from in our time (a book of modernist writing very much part of the experimentalist scene: first published in Paris, first printed at the "three mountains press" and originally for sale at Shakespeare & Company, 1924)
• audio: Al Filreis and Shawn Walker on Hemingway's and Stein's cubist language, including a reading by Shawn Walker of Stein's "Any one doing something and standing"
• paper option #3 What are the similarities between Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and the two excerpts from Hemingway's prose available here? What attitudes toward language do these two pieces of writing share?
• poetic terms: "haiku", "free verse"
  supplemental/optional readings:
• Wallace Stevens - brief bio
• Guillaume Appolinaire, "There Is"
• Wallace Stevens web site
• (example of latter-day imagism) Bruce Weigl, "Rapture" (1992)

Wed, Oct 6 - 6 PM - Joan Retallack at the Writers House

Thur, Oct 7 - William Carlos Williams: no ideas but in things!

Dr. Williams - the pediatrian taking a break on a porch off an upper floor of Passaic General Hospital, 1936

• headnote to William Carlos Williams (Norton)
• William Carlos Williams, "Spring and All," "This Is Just to Say," "Portrait of a Lady," "The Young Housewife" (Norton)
• video: Williams's commentary on "This Is Just to Say," including Flossie's response & an animated dramatization of the marital narrative
• Flossie Wiliams's reply to her husband's "This Is Just to Say"
• Wim Delvoye artworks (courtesy Kenneth Goldsmith)
• paper option #4 Williams's "This Is Just to Say" was written "for" and/or "to" Williams's wife Flossie; in a sense, it's "just" a household message, saying: "Sorry, I took the plums you were going to eat." Read the "Note to 'This Is Just to Say'" and be sure you understand how and why Flossie made her rejoinder to her husband in the form of her own writing. Being sure to bring in your judgment as to the overall success or failure of imagism generally, write an essay taking one of the following positions: (a) William Carlos Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is manifestly poetic, whereas Flossie Williams's "Reply" obviously is unpoetic or non-poetic, or (b) Williams's "This Is Just to Say" is no more of a poem than Flossie's reply.
• Williams, "At the ballgame"
• Williams, "The rose is obsolete"
• Bob Martin, WCW Hallmark card to go with "The rose is obsolete"
• Saul Steinberg cartoon: [the painter's muse brings flowers]
• video: mini-lecture by Al Filreis intended (a) as a reading of Williams's "The rose is obsolete, and (b) as an introduction to the writing of Stein by way of H.D.'s "Sea Rose," Williams's "The rose is obsolete," Williams's "Portrait of a Lady" and Stein's cubist portrait-in-language of Picasso
• Williams, both versions of "Young Woman at a Window": version 1, version 2
• paper option #5 You are reading two distinct versions of Williams's poem "Young Woman at a Window." I realize that you needn't specifically prefer one over the other, but for this paper I am asking you to do so unequivocally. Which do you prefer and why? On what basis (formalist, ethical, political, structural [I realize these are overlapping categories]) do you make your preference?
• Williams, "A poem is a small...machine"
  supplemental/optional readings:
• on "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"
• recording of an interactive discussion on William Carlos Williams, held Sunday, October 10, 1999 ()

Tues, Oct 12 and Thur, Oct 14 - Stein: the grammar turned & attacked me

• Gertrude Stein biography
• Williams on Stein
• Edith Sitwell on Stein
• Miriam Allen deFord attacks modernism's "cult of incomprehensibility"
• Robert Creeley on reading difficult poetry, including Stein's
• modernists' concept of time in 3 sentences
• Stein on doing nothing
• Stein, "Christian Berard" portrait (PDF)
• Stein, "A Very Valentine"
• Stein, "Let Us Describe"
• Sherwood Anderson on Stein

  Gertrude Stein (photography by Carl Van Vechten)

• Gertrude Stein, selections from Tender Buttons (all "objects") (Norton)
• Gertrude Stein, from Tender Buttons: "Water Raining"
• Gertrude Stein, "A long dress" from Tender Buttons
• Robert Grenier on Tender Buttons
• Stein, "Readings"
• video: Al Filreis and Shawn Walker on Stein's "Readings"
• Gertrude Stein, "Is Dead" (1936)
• Stein, on narrative
• Stein, on textual movement
• Stein on the noun (1935)
• Stein, on composition
• Stein, "Composition as Explanation" as read (and commented on) by Joan Retallack
• cubism defined
• Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912) (at the Philadelphia Museum of Art)
• Picasso's "Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler" (1910)
• Stein, "If I Told Him" (A Completed Portrait of Pablo Picasso) (a transcription)
• Picasso's portrait of Stein
• Stein a naturalist?
• Stein on "loving repeating"
• Stein on writing clearly
• Stein on "speaking english"
• audio: Stein reading her "If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Pablo Picasso)"
• Marjorie Perloff discusses Stein on nouns and Stein's portraits (an mp3 file, excerpt from a 1999 discussion with English 88)
• paper option #6 Does Stein's verbal/language "portrait" of Picasso ("If I Told Him") successfully move into the realm of writing Picasso's cubist experiment in painting? Is Stein's cubist poem-portrait successfully cubist in the sense that Picasso's "Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler" (1910) is? (You are contending either that it is successful or that it is not.)
• An interview with Stein
• W. G. Rogers on Stein: not what it is, but what it does
• Wallace Fowlie on Stein: a contract between words and thought
• Stein's review of Alfred Kreymborg's Troubador

  Picasso's portrait of Stein

• Mark Van Doren's "First Glance," a review of the same book
• paper option #7 Write this paper only after reading very carefully all of the Gertrude Stein selections assigned for this day. Being sure to bring in your general judgment as to the success or failure of Stein's modernist use of language, take one of the following two positions: (a) Stein's experimental review of Alfred Kreymborg's book presents a more perceptive evaluation than does Van Doren's conventional review; (b) Van Doren's review, although stylistically conventional, is far and away the more perceptive of the two.
• Stein, "Any one doing something and standing"
• Gertrude Stein on similarity & difference
• Lyn Hejinian reads her own work through the influence of Stein
  supplemental/optional readings:
• Marjorie Perloff at the Writers House - Wednesday, October 20, 1999 - conversation with Bob Perelman and Al Filreis about Stein recorded and available here. ()
• recording of a live webcast interactive discussion on Stein, held on Monday, October 18, 1999 ()
• Gertrude Stein, "Tender Buttons" -- objects
• Michael Gold on Gertrude Stein, "A Literary Idiot" (from the Communist New Masses)
• Stein, "Reflections on the Atomic Bomb"
• Gertrude Stein per John Ashbery from a 1957 review
• Ideas for teaching Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, including passages about Hemingway's linguistic cubism in relation to Stein's

Thurs, Oct 14, 6 PM - reading by Peter Gizzi and Marjorie Welish

Tues, Oct 19 - "Talking about things that are understandable only weighs down the mind": modernism at extremes

• Alfred Jarry
• Maxwell Bodenheim (as remembered by Ben Hecht)
• William Carlos Williams on the Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven (from his autobiography)
• Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, "A Dozen Cocktails, Please"
• jacket blurb by Filreis for Irene Gammel's biography of the Baroness
• audio: a biographical profile of the Baroness from the sixth issue of Sulphur (1983), read by Shawn Walker
• audio: a sketch of the Baroness from Kenneth Rexroth's American Poetry in the Twentieth Century, read by George Blaustein
• The Baroness look in 2002
• student dresses as Baroness
• headnote to Hart Crane (Norton)
• Tristan Tzara, "How to Make a Dadaist Poem"
• audio: Salvador Dali is asked about Freud
• Sara Teasdale, "The Look"
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, headnote, First Fig," "Grown Up," "Love is Not All: It is Not Meat Nor Drink" (Norton)
• poetic term: "sonnet"
• John Peale Bishop, "A Recollection"
  supplemental/optional readings:
• James Joyce's Ulysses reviewed in The New York Times in 1922: "Not ten men or women out of a hundred can read "Ulysses" through, and of the ten who succeed in doing so, five of them will do it as a tour de force. I am probably the only person, aside from the author, that has ever read it twice from beginning to end. I have learned more psychology and psychiatry from it than I did in ten years at the Neurological Institute."
• Millay biography
• Dave Barry, "That's Not a Trash Bag - It's Art!" (2003)
• "Animal Cruelty or Art?" (April 1996)
• concrete poetry