What Is Poetry? English 243, Fall 2010 Monday & Wednesday, 12:00–12:50pm Architecture 0204 Friday discussion sections in various locations
Instructors: Professor Michael Collier, 3103 Tawes Office Hours: Monday 10-11:45; Wednesday 1-2 Telephone: 301-405-3819 Email: [email protected]
Teaching Assistants: Conor Burke, Kim Calder, Laura Heninger Hill and Shenandoah Sowash. (TA information below in Course Information & Policies).
I. Course Materials
1) Course Packet
2) Shahid Reads His Own Palm, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Alice James Books, $15.95 (ISBN: 978-188229581-4). It is available on the University Book Center
II. Course Purpose
What is Poetry? is an inquiry into the oldest form of literature and an exploration of what is arguably the most complex, profound, and ubiquitous expression of human experience. A primary goal of the class is to develop student’s ability to see that in patterns made from the sound of words, the structures of syntax, the vividness of images, and the startling presence of metaphor, arises a mode of imaginative thinking founded on paradox and ambiguity--what the English poet John Keats calls “Negative Capability.” To be able to think like a poet allows us to perceive and interpret the world in more intricate and satisfying ways. Learning to read poems helps us to think like a poet and to see that such thinking engages every aspect of endeavor: science, politics, work, religion, and art. It also provides us with unique ways of comparing, across epochs and cultures, human responses to war, love, sickness, and death.
What is Poetry? focuses on the close reading of individual poems primarily from Anglo- American and Western traditions, although consideration is given to non-Western traditions as well. Students will become thoroughly familiar with the most significant forms and conventions of Western poetry, including the sonnet, villanelle, ballad, ode, blank verse, and free verse; as well as elements of prosody, such as meter, rhyme, diction, alliteration, assonance, and consonance to name a few. Students will also learn about 2 poetry’s roots in oral and folk traditions and their connections to popular song forms such as ballads, blues, spirituals, rock and roll, and jazz.
III. Learning Outcomes
The course is designed so that students will achieve the following four Learning Outcomes as mandated by guidelines for the university’s Humanities General Education Courses. By the end of this course, students will be able to:
1) Demonstrate familiarity and facility with fundamental terminology and concepts in poetry.
2) Demonstrate understanding of methods used by scholars in poetry.
3) Describe how language use is related to ways thinking, cultural heritage, and cultural values.
4) Demonstrate the ability to formulate a thesis related to a specific topic in the humanities and to support the thesis with evidence and argumentation.
IV. Course Description
1) Organization: Monday and Wednesday the entire class will meet in Architecture 0204 to discuss poems that have been organized around specific themes and topics. It is difficult to have a sustained discussion in a group as large as ours, but I will ask questions frequently and members of the class will be called upon to answer my questions as well as read the poems out loud to the group. It is extremely important that you take notes diligently in class. All of the content for the course is disseminated in class. On Friday, you will meet in discussion sections taught by a teaching assistant.
2) Discussion Sections: The discussion sections are designed to be an extension of and a supplement to the large class meetings. These weekly sessions will allow you to engage in conversations about the poems we have gone over in the larger setting, to flesh out discussion about those poems we may not have had time to fully consider or to talk about supplemental reading. You are expected to come prepared with questions and comments about the poems and concepts introduced in the lecture. It is in this smaller setting where you will be given a greater opportunity to participate. Participation is worth 10% of your final grade.
3) Assignments: On average you will be required to read two or more poems for each Monday and Wednesday class. Reading poems requires that you pay attention to words in ways that are very different from the way you pay attention when reading a newspaper or magazine or even a story or novel. This means that it’s very important for you to read each poem several times. Keep a dictionary nearby and look up words you’re not sure you understand. It’s also important that you get in the habit of reading poems out loud. You need to hear what they sound like and what the words feel like as they resonate 3 inside your chest cavity, throat, and mouth. In addition to the poems you will read and discuss in class, you will also memorize two poems during the semester. You will be asked to reproduce a different one on the mid-term and final exams respectively. (Please see the attached sheet concerning the memorization of poems.)
4) Course Packet: It is absolutely necessary that you bring your “Course Packet” to each lecture and discussion section meeting.
5) Tests: There will be three tests during the semester: 1) Friday, September 24; 2) Friday, October 22 (Midterm); and 3) Friday, December 17, 8-10 a.m. (Final).
Test format will be a combination of multiple choice, identification, short answer, and short essay.
6) Close Analysis Paper: there will be a three-page close analysis paper due Friday, November 19.
7) Grades: The first exam and close analysis paper will each count for 15% of your grade. The midterm and final will each count for 30% of your grade. Participation, primarily in the discussion sections, will count for 10%. Early-warning Grades will be posted by 8 a.m. Thursday, October 14. The course follows the grading scale described at http://www.umdedu/catalog/index.cfm/show/content.section/c/27/ss/1548/s/1543.
V. Course Information & Policies
1) Courtesies: Please arrive promptly and be mindful that your cell phone is turned off. If you find it too difficult to arrive on time from a previous class to this one, it would benefit you to drop this class. Please do not sit on the floor in the back of the class. There are comfortable seats for everyone.
2) No Laptops, iPhones, Blackberries, headphones, earbuds, etc. Unless you have a special circumstance that requires you to use an electronic device for note taking or listening, laptop computers and other electronic devices and components should be turned off and put away during class. If you do have a special circumstance that requires you to use any of the above, the Disability Support Services should be contacted. Please see special circumstances below.
3) Academic Integrity: Violations of the Code of Academic Integrity will not be tolerated: specifically, plagiarism, whether it is submitting someone else’s work as your own (such as incorporating Internet text into test answers and claiming it as your own) or submitting your own work completed for another class without permission, and cheating, defined as “intentionally using or attempting to use unauthorized materials, information, or study aids in any academic exercise.” Please review the University’s Code of Academic Integrity at http://www.studenthonorcouncil.umd.edu/code.html. 4
All exams must contain the following honor pledge written out and signed by you: I pledge on my honor that I have not given or received any unauthorized assistance on this examination.
4) Canceled Class: If class is canceled for any reason (a weather emergency, for example), please continue reading according to the syllabus. If a test was to be taken on a day class is canceled, then the test will be given at the next class meeting.
5) Religious Observance. The University System of Maryland policy on religious observances provides that students should not be penalized because of observances of their religious beliefs. Students shall be given an opportunity, wherever feasible, to make up within a reasonable time any academic assignment that is missed due to individual participation in religious observances. It is the student’s responsibility to inform the instructor in advance of any intended absences for religious observances. Notice should be provided in writing as soon as possible, but no later than the end of schedule adjustment period. http://www.umdedu/catalog/index.cfm/show/content.section/c/27/ss/1584/s/1540
6) Attendance and Excused Absences. It is also the student’s responsibility to inform the instructor in advance of any intended absences for university sanctioned events (e.g. competitions, conferences, athletic events). Notice should be provided in writing as soon as possible, but no later than the end of schedule adjustment period. Absences for medical reasons must be accompanied by clear, written documentation, on letterhead, from a physician (or other practitioner) specifying that the student was incapable of attending the missed classes. For further information please consult: http://www.testudo.umd.soc/atedasse.html.
7) Email Contact and Class Email List. If you send email to me, please be sure to include the course number and your name on the subject line of the message, otherwise I may inadvertently delete your message, along with the many items of spam I receive daily, without reading it. Please check your email regularly for announcements sent to the class email list.
8) Special Circumstances: If you have a disability that requires accommodations, please see your TA immediately. If you have a disability and have not registered with Disability Support Services in the Shoemaker Building (314-7682 or 405-7683 TDD), you should do so promptly. Should any other special circumstances affect your work in this course, please let your TA know in writing as soon as possible.
9) Resources: The course will have a space on Blackboard. To log on to Blackboard, go to www.elms.umd.edu and follow directions for logging on. The course space will appear in the right-hand column after you have logged on. Click on the course title to enter the Blackboard space. On the Blackboard space you will find the syllabus, advice for reading and writing about poems, and a number of important links to useful poetry sites and University resources. If you have trouble logging on, please contact the OIT helpdesk. 5
10) Teaching Assistant Contact Information:
Conor Burke [email protected] Laura Heninger Hill Extension: None [email protected] 2132 Tawes Extension: None Hours: TBA Hours: TBA
Kim Calder Shenandoah Sowash [email protected] [email protected] Extension: None Extension: None 2132 Tawes 2224 Tawes Hours: TBA Hours: TBA
VI. Assignments Schedule
Below you will find the schedule for our Monday and Wednesday class meetings, and the exam dates.
Week 1 What is Poetry?
Monday, August 30 Introduction to the course
Wednesday, September 1 Read: “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” Adrienne Rich; “Two Trains,” Tony Hoagland
Week 2 What is Poetry? (continued)
Monday, September 6 No class: Labor Day
Wednesday, September 8 Read: “The Vine,” Robert Herrick; “Sonnets 65, 116, & 130,” William Shakespeare. If we have time, we will read “Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze,” Theodore Roethke
Week 3 Riddles, Spells, Curses, & Prayers
Monday, September 13 (Last day for schedule adjustment) Read: “Exeter Riddles,” “This World is not Conclusion (#501),” Emily Dickinson; Three Spells and Curses from the Ancient World 6
Wednesday, September 15 Read: “The Names of the Hare,” translated by Seamus Heaney; “b o d y,” James Merrill; from “The Cloud,” Percy Bysshe Shelley
Week 4 Carpe Diem
Monday, September 20 Read: “To His Coy Mistress,” Andrew Marvell; “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” Robert Herrick; and “What Do Women Want,” Kim Addonizio
Wednesday, September 22 Continue with Carpe Diem
Friday, September 24 FIRST EXAM
Week 5 Song
Monday, September 27 Read: “Richard Cory,” Edwin Arlington Robinson; “Richard Cory,” Simon and Garfunkel; “Fun,” Wyn Cooper; and “All I Wanna Do,” Sheryl Crow
Wednesday, September 29 Read: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas
Week 6 Reginald Dwayne Betts
Monday, October 4 Read: Shahid Reads His Own Palm, Reginald Dwayne Betts
Wednesday, October 6 Reginald Dwayne Betts visits class
Week 7 Story
Monday, October 11 Read: “Halley’s Comet,” Stanley Kunitz
Wednesday, October 13 Read: “The Fish,” Elizabeth Bishop
Week 8 Poems in Conversation with Poetry
Monday, October 18 Read: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace Stevens; 7
“Twenty-Six Ways of Looking at a Blackman,” Raymond Patterson; and “Thirteen Ways of Eradicating Blackbirds," Mark Defoe
Wednesday, October 20 Read: “Sonnet #31 from Astrophil and Stella,” Sir Philip Sidney; “Sad Steps,” Philip Larkin
Friday, October 22 MID-TERM EXAM
Week 9 War Poetry
Monday, October 25 Read: “Now I shall ask you to imagine…” (Excerpt from Homer’s Iliad, Christopher Logue, translation); “In Flanders Fields,” John McCrae; “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen
Wednesday, October 27 Read: “Facing It,” Yusef Komunyakaa; “Vergissmeinnicht,” Keith Douglas; “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” Randall Jarrell
Week 10 Ballads
Monday, November 1 Read: “Mary Hamilton” (two versions)
Wednesday, November 3 Read: “The Ballad of Rudolph Reed,” Gwendolyn Brooks
Week 11 America's Odd Couple
Monday, November 8 (Last Day to Drop with a “W”) Read: "The Impossible Marriage," Donald Hall; A section of "Song of Myself," Walt Whitman; two poems by Emily Dickinson.
Wednesday, November 10 Whitman and Dickinson
Week 12 America
Monday, November 15 Read: “America the Beautiful,” Katharine Lee Bates; from “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman; “America,” Tony Hoagland; “American History,” Michael Harper
Wednesday, November 17 Read: “America,” Claude McKay; “America,” Allen Ginsberg 8
Friday, November 19 CLOSE ANALYSIS PAPER DUE
Week 13 Public Poems
Monday, November 22 Read: “Fear,” C.K. Williams
Wednesday, November 24 Thanksgiving Break: No class
Friday, November 26 Thanksgiving Break: No Discussion Sections
Week 14 Mothers and Fathers
Monday, November 29 Read: “The Whipping” and “Those Winter Sundays,” Robert Hayden
Wednesday, December 1 Read: “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke
Week 15 Dramatic Monologue
Monday, December 8 Read: “Bog Queen,” Seamus Heaney; “Yoko,” Thom Gunn
Wednesday, December 10 Read: “The Dog,” Gerald Stern
Friday, December 17, 8–10 A.M. FINAL EXAM
The final will be given in Architecture 0204, where you meet on Monday and Wednesday. IT WILL NOT BE GIVEN IN THE DISCUSSION SECTION ROOM, WHERE YOU MEET ON FRIDAY. 9
Terms for Course ( a very partial list)
Definitions for these terms will be given in lecture and discussion sessions.
Technical Terms General Terms alliteration allusion assonance archetype blank verse diction caesura elegy couplet free verse (formal verse) end-stopped idiom enjambment image internal rhyme irony near-rhyme (slant/sight) metaphor perfect rhyme mnemonic octave (sestet) mood onomatopoeia motif quatrain myth rhyme scheme ode simile sonnet stanza speaker syntax tone tercet voice 10
Memorizing Poems
On the mid-term and the final you will be asked to write out a poem you’ve memorized, selected from the list below. Spelling, punctuation, capitalization, etc., will all be counted, so be as accurate as possible. None of these poems is very long and all of them have meter and rhyme and other forms of repetition that should help you engage with them.
I’d like to suggest that you pick a poem for the mid-term exam in the next couple of days and then memorize it. At exam time you’ll then need only to refresh your memory. Occasionally, I’ll ask someone to recite the poem they’ve memorized in class. We’ll do this for fun rather than for a participation grade.
Mid-term
Emily Dickinson, #341 (“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—”) W.B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan” Robert Frost, “Neither Out Far nor In Deep” Wallace Stevens, “Anecdote of the Jar” William Carlos Williams, “The Dance” Gwendolyn Brooks, “A Song in the Front Yard”
Final Exam
Robert Frost, “Desert Places” Theodore Roethke, “My Papa’s Waltz” Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art” Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” Philip Larkin, “Sad Steps” Rita Dove, “The House Slave”