Assignment for Monday, 11/15
Read Forche pages 1-20
DWP: Think about the three dichotomies we've discussed (stained glass/clear glass, experience/understanding, mimesis of objects/mimesis of mental state) in terms of their implications for political poetry. What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of either end of the spectrum for poetry that deals with an explicitly political subject?
Assignment for Friday, 11/5
Finish Howe.
DWP: Continue following your three "nodes" through the text -- tracking references, page numbers, and related nodes or ideas. In addition, try to come up with a couple of sentences about what you think the overall project of this book is. Is it a meditation on sleep and insomnia? A treatise about rivalry? An ode to boundary crossing? Given that part of Howe's intent seems to be for us to make the book our own, decide what text means to you.
Assignment for Monday, 10/25
Read Thomson Part I.
No DWP
Blog assignment: (group 1)
write a review of Spahr's This Connection of Everyone with Lungs in which you
1. describe
2. analyze
3. evaluate the text
If you were absent from class on Friday, talk to me or a classmate about this!
Assignment for Wednesday, 10/20
Read Spahr. to page 48.
For the DWP, respond to one of the following two questions:
1. How does Juliana Spahr's work fit within the categories of reflecting the world/reflecting language (stained glass/clear glass) that we established early in the semester? Be specific -- give examples.
2. How does hearing a poet read change or enrich your understanding of that poet's work? You may refer to the audio files I played in class or look for files online -- check Penn Sound and the Academy of American poets.
Assignment for Friday, 10/8
Group 1 blogs on Armantrout
Read the first half of The Wild Iris -- up to p.31
For the DWP, please do close readings of the poems "Lamium" on p. 5 and "Matins" on p.12 (check the page numbers. Several poems in this volume have the same titles). You do not need to compare the poems.
Assignment for Friday, 10/1
Group 2 blogs on Levis due
Read Armantrout, pages 1-40.
Daily written prep for Monday: midterm practice. Pick two poems (by different poets) from any of the books that we've read so far, and write a brief (1-2 page) essay in which you compare and/or contrast them. You should provide a close reading both poems.
Assignment for Monday, 9/27
Group 2 responses due
Read part 2 of Elegy, do a close reading of one poem.
Assignment for Friday, 9/24
Group 1 blog posts on Notley due
Read the preface and part I of Larry Levis's Elegy, and choose 1 poem for a close reading. This is a short reading, so I'd like you to take some time with the Daily Written Prep. Go through the poem line by line, and try to account for as many of Levis's choices (ie, words, line breaks, poetic structure) as possible. We'll discuss each of these poems in class, so be ready to contribute actively to the discussion of "your" poem.
Assignment for Monday, 9/20
Group 1 blog responses due
Read Descent of Alette to p. 100
Question for Daily Written Preparation:
Read the excerpt from the interview with Joshua Clover that I handed out in class. Then read this web page on Bakhtin.
How does The Descent of Alette respond to the critique of lyric poetry made (in slightly different ways) by Keats, Bakhtin, and Clover? Try to point to specific instances in the text.
Assignment for Friday, 9/17
Group 2 blogs (on Merwin) due
Read the 2 reviews of The Decent of Alette on the links page, and part I of the book (through p. 42)
Question for Daily Written Preparation:
Describe the experience of reading The Descent of Alette -- what do you make of this text so far? Why do you think Notley chose this form?
Assignment for Wednesday, 9/15
Finish the Merwin. Group 2 blogs on Merwin for Friday.
Question for daily written preparation:
Now that you've finished the book, think about the text as a whole. How it's structured,the effect of all the poems together, etc. How would you describe Merwin's "project" in this text? What is he up to?
Assignment for Friday, 9/10
Group 1 blogs on Williams due Friday!
Read Merwin to page 36, as well as the two bios of Merwin on the Links page of this blog.
Questions for daily written preparation:
1.What do you notice about the form of Merwin's poems? What are the effects of his formal choices on you as a reader?
2. Does Merwin use language (mostly) to point at the world or to draw our attention to how language works? Try to find an example of one or both tendencies.
Assignment for Wednesday, 9/8
Read the rest of the Williams text, and Cole Swenson's introduction to the anthology American Hybrid.
Questions for daily written preparation: what binaries does Swenson suggest that we can add to our list? What does she suggest about these binaries? Try to find one example of meaning as "transcendent" (ie located outside of the text, in the world) and one example of meaning as "immanent" (ie located within the text itself) in Williams. Bonus question: begin thinking about the two different narratives about modernism that might lead to Armantrout and Levine's poetics, respectively.
Assignment for Friday, 9/3
Your first assignment is to read the first half of Spring and All, by William Carlos Williams (up to page 200). I will hand out the text in the first class. Spring and All is a highly experimental, and frankly, very strange text. If you're like me (and, I would guess, most readers), only some of what you read will have meaning for you. Don't be deterred! Grab what you can -- underline lines or images or passages that interest you, or confuse you, or that you find beautiful. Don't worry about what doesn't speak to you; just keep reading until something does.
Question for daily written preparation: think about the various binaries (traditional/experiental, representational/self-referential, subject-centered/language-centered, etc.) we discussed in the first class. Where does Williams' text fit? How does this text relate to the Levine and/or the Armantrout poems that we read in the first class?
