ASSIGNMENT 12 November 2014

Pick up the core text, if you haven't yet: American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators and Outsiders, ed. Eliot Weinberger (New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1993)

The anthology is available in the University Bookshop. If you are leaving campus for Reading Week, it is *crucial that you acquire a copy of the anthology before you do so.* There is no electronic or online version. There is a copy available in the library on short loan.

Please note that there is extensive reading, as well as a writing assignment, for Week 7. Also note that the unit assessment is due right at the start of Spring Term, on January 6th (as detailed under the "Assessment" link on the above blog). This is a change from last year's date.

Consequently it will be best to hit this unit with a running start, and to use Reading Week to build momentum. We only have four weeks together and need to make the most of it!

For our first meeting:

READ: “American Poetry Since 1950: A Very Brief History” (pp. 395-408);Langston Hughes, “from Montage of a Dream Deferred” (pp. 48-61); Lorine Niedecker, “Paean to Place” (pp. 63-69); George Oppen, “Route” (pp. 103-111); Gary Snyder, “What You Should Know to be a Poet,” “What Happened Here Before” (pp. 271-74); Amiri Baraka, “Dope” (pp. 311-13); Ronald Johnson, “BEAM 4,” “BEAM 7,” “ARK 37: Prospero’s Songs to Ariel” (pp. 325-28, 331-34); Susan Howe, “There Are Not Leaves Enough to Crown to Cover to Crown to Cover” (not in the anthology, PDF link on weblog).

WRITE: Pick the poem that most affected you in the reading for this week (could be a *section* of one of the long poems or sequences). Make some notes on a formal method, symbolic emphasis, or compositional strategy you feel to be at work in this poem (literally how you think the poem was put together).

Pick an historical moment or place to focus on. The historical moment could be the present, but make it larger than yourself: think of the present from the standpoint of the future.

Write an “Objectivist” poem (2-3 pages) of that place or moment that includes documentary material (such as journalistic accounts, court briefs, scientific reports, Internet search returns, other kinds of found language, seen on signage or overheard, transcriptions of the soundscape, including nonhuman “language”)—an alternative, after the Susan Howe piece, is to research all the world events that were reported on the day of your birth—and that borrows some formal method, symbolic emphasis, or strategy from the poem that affected you. Minimize the use of “I”.

Otherwise, the overall form is up to you. Except for one rule, for now: please DON’T RHYME. (Echoes and the occasional accidental rhyme are of course fine. But use this exercise to focus on other aspects of poetry.) Pay attention to line breaks. Think of each line you write as an independent unit, with its own center of gravity (don’t just write sentences). Offer stanza breaks and use the page space or find some other way to help the poem “breathe.” (Or if you write a breathlessly condensed poem, then, again, there should be a reason for that compression.)

If you get stuck, pick one of Bernadette Mayer’s writing exercises, or one of the writing games or (Soma)tic exercises (see the link on the home page), to help you generate and structure the poem.

When you are done, write a short (2-3 paragraph) prose commentary discussing the modes and strategies at work in the poem; one paragraph should discuss the poem that influenced you and what you borrowed from it.