Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry                                    Professor Ostrom

Office: Wyatt Hall, 336

Office hours: T-Th, 10:00-11:30, and by appointment. Drop by and chat about poetry.

Phone: x3434 or x3235, the latter for messages, the former for voice mail.

Email = ostrom@ups.edu

Home page = www.ups.edu/faculty/ostrom/

I will post a copy of this syllabus on the home page.

English 403 gives you a chance to write poetry intensively, consider your work in a supportive but challenging setting, and examine theoretical and cultural underpinnings of contemporary poetry. We’ll also read and analyze much poetry, of course.

Many of you will continue to write after this term; for you the course will be an important step in a long journey. Others of you may not write a lot of poetry in the years ahead, but the course will nonetheless give you experience in reading and writing that you can draw on later, and you will likely continue to read poetry the rest of your lives.

To read poetry you might not otherwise encounter; to re-examine poetry you have already read; to risk sharing work-in-progress with others, in hopes of seeing things in your work you might not otherwise see; to explore the mysteries of language; to become a more generous, insightful reader; these are other aims of the course.

In some ways, you the members of the class are the most important context for your writing. You are the immediate community, the first audience for drafts of poems. Our reading of other poets provides another context. I have chosen poets and/or poems that are fairly well known, but their being well known wasn’t my primary reason for selection. I wanted us to read poems that were both accomplished and accessible and that reflected a range of experience. I also wanted us to read poets who worked both in free verse and conventional forms and who improvised with both. Padgett’s book is a concise, unpretentious introduction to a variety of forms. Negri’s anthology is an inexpensive tour of venerable poems from which we might learn some surprising writerly moves. Our most inexhaustible, mysterious, and mischievous context is language itself.

Rita Dove. Selected Poems. New York: Vintage, 1993.

Paul Negri, ed. Great Short Poems. New York: Dover, 2000.

Ron Padgett. A Handbook of Poetic Forms. 2^nd edition. New York: Teacher & Writers Collaborative, 2000.

Karl Shapiro. The Wild Card: Selected Poems. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998.

William Carlos Wiliams. Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1985.

Assumptions

I assume that in English 203, the PREREQUISITE for 403, you read a lot of poems, acquired some terminology, wrote some poems that gave you confidence. I also assume you know what a workshop is like, that you're comfortable working in a group, that you can mix generosity and camaraderie with solid criticism. In general, I expect a higher level of commitment to the work of writing and reading poetry than I expect in English 203.

I expect you to come to class when you're not ill. Absence from class may affect your grade. I prefer that you don't eat in class—all professors have their pet peeves.

A part--not all--of this course operates as a workshop, a teaching method that is often misunderstood. Group work is not for everyone. If you think writers have to work alone, or that advice from others somehow compromises your work, or that others always misunderstand your work, then do not take this class. A workshop is but one way to develop your writing. If you prefer another route, take it.

The workshop method asks you to collaborate with good will, respect, and punctuality. It assumes that an audience's response to your work is not, in fact, always right but that it will help you see things in your writing to which you may be blind.

After years of trial and error using workshops, I have--for the moment--settled on the use of smaller groups (as opposed to the whole class); of immediate, spontaneous in-class responses (as opposed to taking colleagues' poems home); of the rule of silence (which I'll explain later); and of writing before we talk.

The focus of discussions must always be on the poem, not the poet. The guidelines we’ll discuss later spring from dozens of workshops I've led or taken part in, and you’re probably already familiar with them. They encourage you to look first for the strengths in any draft of a poem--yours or someone else's.

Please avoid extremes of accepting everything a group says about your work and rejecting everything it says. The group is there to allow you to take your poem on a trial run. Personality conflicts? We'll handle these if and when the come up.

Group evaluation should offer support and detailed response & analysis. Pay attention to the way you phrase your critique; if a poem confuses or disturbs you, say so, but say so in a way that will make the writer feel PRODUCTIVE as she or he moves on to another draft and other poems.

It's up to you to make the most of the feedback you get--and to keep the group working well. You need not be friends, and you should not be competitors.

We'll do a lot of reading. The idea here is to broaden your knowledge of poetry and to let you place your own work in several contexts. Poets who came before us shape the way we write, one way or another. Even if we choose to resist these contexts, we need to be aware of them. Resistance itself can be a good source of energy for writing.

I'll assign a few poems. Why assign poems? To get you to try something you might not otherwise try; to stretch the talent all of you have. The assignments always allow a lot of room in which to maneuver, however. Mostly, however, we’ll just "play off" of what we read and not imitate in any mechanical way.

You'll present drafts of poems to one or two classmates, to your group, and to me. At the end of the term, you'll submit revised versions of these poems in a portfolio, titling the collection. We’ll work on revising poems and shaping the portfolio.

The feedback you'll get during the term will be from your colleagues--in writing and orally; from me, as I float from group to group--and as I comment in writing on each draft. Please come by during office hours and discuss your poems, too.

We’ll all constantly be tossing out ideas for poems, shaping exercises for in-class writing that will sometimes lead to poems, so you should have plenty of poetry taking shape in your notebook. Eight finished poems, then, is the bare minimum that should be in your portfolio; think more in terms of 10 or 12.

Also, you are required to view one video program in the VOICES AND VISIONS series or a video program about another poet. Let me know what you’ve decided to view before you view it.

Portfolio: 60 per cent

Summary-response to one video, plus two quizzes: 20 per cent, total.

Participation (class discussions, in-class writing and reading, group work, conferences, etc.): 20 per cent.

Concerning February 7: Every two or three years, I attend a professional conference that takes place during the semester. This is one of those years. I’m participating in a "symposium on the art, life, and legacy of Langston Hughes" at the University of Kansas in early February. (Hughes would have been 100 in February, and he spent part of his childhood in Kansas.) Consequently, there will be no class-meeting on February 7.

Tuesday, January 22. Overview of the course. Writing, based on some reading in Great Short Poems.

Thursday, January 24. For today, read Williams, Selected Poems, pp. 15-70. Write notes about several of the poems. Also, choose one poem that you think is especially effective and be ready to say why you found it to be so. Some in-class writing, based on Williams. Bring in a draft of a new poem; it may be based on writing we did Tuesday but does not have to be. Discuss guidelines for group work.

Tuesday, January 29. Poem due, with copies. Group work.

Thursday, January 31. For today, in Shapiro’s The Wild Card, read poems on the following pages: 3, 7, 11, 13, 15, 16, 33, 130, 175. Again, write notes on the poems and also choose one poem you like a lot and be ready to discuss it. Some writing, based on Shapiro.

Tuesday, February 5. Poem due, with copies. Group work.

Thursday, February 7. NO CLASS-MEETING.

Tuesday, February 12. Overview & review of prosody. In Padgett’s book, read entries on alliteration, assonance, blank verse, couplet, foot, quatrain, rhyme, rhythm, and sonnet.

In Great Short Poems, read any 10 poems of your choosing between pages 1 and 28. Also read Hopkins’ poem, "Pied Beauty," on p. 31. Be ready to discuss the rhythm (meter), rhyme (and other sounds), and form of the ten poems you choose; and what on earth is going on in Hopkins’ poem? Writing a "sound poem" in class.

Thursday, February 14. For today, bring in a copy of your favorite "love poem," however you define that. You may be required to volunteer to read it out loud. In Great Short Poems, read (or re-read) "Shall I Compare . .?" by Shakespeare, p. 1; "To a Lady . . .", by George Etherege, p. 7; "Jenny Kissed Me," by Leigh Hunt, p. 15; and "How Do I Love Thee?", by E. B. Browning, p. Also, read, in Shapiro’s Wild Card, the poems on pages 58, 59, 60.

Tuesday, February 19. Poem due, with copies. Group work.

Thursday, February 21. For today, in Padgett’s book, read the entry on "Prose Poem." In Shapiro’s Wild Card, read the poems on the following pages: 127, 132, 133, 136-37, 141, 143, 147.

Tuesday, February 26. For today, bring in some information about the year of your birth. Culturally, politically, socially, what was going on then? Rummage around in the library and on the Internet. What was going on in your family then? Also, read "Recapitulations," p. 96, in Shapiro’s Wild Card. In Rita Dove’s Selected Poems, read the introduction, including the poem at the end (xxii-xxvi), "In the Old Neighborhood."

Thursday, February 28. Poem due, with copies. Group work. Distribute "Musée des Beaux Art."

Tuesday, March 5. For today, in Great Short Poems, read Oscar Wilde’s "Symphony in Yellow," p. 36, and Ezra Pound’s "L’Art, 1910," p. 49. Also read "Musée des Beaux Art." Field trip—but come to the classroom first.

Thursday, March 7. Review for quiz. Poem due, with copies. Group work.

Tuesday, March 12. Group work, if necessary. Quiz #1.

Thursday, March 14. Revise-o-Rama #1.

March 18-22. Spring Break.

Tuesday, March 26. For today, in Williams’ Selected Poems, read "The Locust Tree in Flower," both versions (pages 93 and 94), and "The Bitter World of Spring," 164. In Dove’s Selected Poems, read "November for Beginners," page 87. In Shapiro’s Wild Card, read "California Winter," p. 166. In Great Short Poems, read "Morning at the Window" by T.S. Eliot, p. 51. In Padgett’s book, read the entry on "Pastoral Poem."

Thursday, March 28. A look at lots of alternate forms. In Padgett’s book, read the entries on cento, chant, epistle, event poem, found poem, ghazal, lune, list poem, pantoum, and ritual poem. We go in search of "found language."

Tuesday, April 2. Forms that ask rather a lot. In Padgett’s book, read the entries on sonnet, vilanelle, and sestina. In Shapiro’s Wild Card, red "W.H.A.," p. 172, and "You Call These Poems?", p. 164. In Great Short Poems, read "Do Not Go Gently . . .," by Dylan Thomas, p. 53. In Williams’ Selected Poems, read "The Poem," p. 151. In Rita Dove’s Selected Poems, read "Anti-Father," page 112. Have you viewed a video yet?

Thursday, April 4. Shall we organize a reading? Poem due, with copies. Group work.

Tuesday, April 9. The art of gloom. In Great Short Poems, read the poems by Hardy, 30-31, by Robinson, 40-41, by Dunbar ("Life"), 42, and Frost’s "Fire and Ice," 44. In Dove’s Selected Poems, read "Primer for the Nuclear Age," 132. In Padgett’s book, read the entry on blues-poem.

Thursday, April 11. Review for second quiz. Poem due, with copies. Group work.

Tuesday, April 16. Group work, if necessary. Quiz #2.

Thursday, April 18. Response to video due. Also, bring in a portable CD player with headphones and two instrumental CDs.

Tuesday, April 23. Bring in a list of your favorite foods. Be specific. Not just "chocolate" but a very particular kind of chocolate. Not just "potato" but a specific kind cooked a certain way. Also bring in a paragraph about a memory of someone cooking. Also bring your lunch to class (we break the rules). In Williams’ Selected Poems, read "This Is Just to Say," p. 74. In Dove’s Selected Poems, read "Champagne," p. 18, "The Boast," p. 45, "Grape Sherbet," p. 105, "Why I Turned Vegetarian," p. 125. In Shapiro’s Wild Card, read "The Glutton," p. 32. In Padgett’s book, read Neruda’s "Ode to Watermelon," in the entry on ode.

Thursday, April 25. Poem due, with copies. Group work.

Tuesday, April 30. Review guidelines for the portfolio. Revise-o-Rama #2.

Thursday, May 2. Shaping the portfolio and working on titles.

Tuesday, May 7. Read-o-Rama. Date set for turning in portfolio.