English 403—Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry Fall 2006
Professor Hans Ostrom
Welcome to English 403. Here is some basic information:
My office: 336 Wyatt Hall. Office hours: Monday and Wednesday, 2:00-3:45 p.m., and by appointment. Email: ostrom@ups.edu. Webpage: www.ups.edu/faculty/ostrom/ . Telephone: (879)-3434. Telephone for the English Department: (879)-3235. Mail box: located in the mail room near the English Department’s main office, third floor, Wyatt Hall.
The University’s Equal Opportunity Statement
The University of Puget Sound does not discriminate in education or employment on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, marital or familial status, sexual orientation, Vietnam-era veteran status, gender identity, or any other basis prohibited by local, state, or federal laws. This policy complies with the spirit and the letter of applicable federal, state and local laws, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Questions about the policy may be referred to the University's Director of Human Resources and Affirmative Action (253-879-3116) or the Office of Civil Rights, Department of Education, Washington, D.C. 20202.
Objectives of the Course
The course gives you a chance to write poetry intensively, study the work of published poets, consider your work in a supportive but challenging setting, and examine theoretical, cultural, and technical underpinnings of contemporary poetry. One such underpinning is prosody, which the OED defines as “the science of versification” and which might also be seen a way to study the inner workings of how poets, even in free verse, evoke and manipulate sound by means of the written word. Such evocation of sound is a mysterious process, partly because words on the page are literally mute but figuratively noisy. The mystery makes the study of prosody all the more pleasurable, if you like that sort of thing, and if you’re a poet, you do like that sort of thing.
Many of you will continue to write after this term; for you the course will be an important step in a long journey. Some 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 some other aims of the course.
The Etiquette and Atmosphere of the Course
Here are some guidelines to which all of us should try to adhere. None of them will be surprising to you or difficult for us to follow. Indeed, I hope they’ll seem familiar, even obvious, but sometimes it’s good to reaffirm the familiar. All are aimed at creating a productive, workable environment.
Group Work
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 you may have overlooked.
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, just to gather our thoughts, before we talk.
Poem and Poet
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. As with so many other things in life, showing up and doing your best mean a lot.
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. This loosely directed writing will always leave you a lot of room in which to maneuver, however. Mostly we’ll just “play off” of what we read and not imitate in any mechanical way, and often we’ll create these ideas for poetry together.
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 and including a brief discussion of how your poetry has developed during the semester. 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. Feel free to share poems with each other outside of class, too. For example, you may share a certain poem with someone who happened not to be in your group when your poem was discussed. Join a poetry-group in the Writer’s Guild, too, if you like, to get extra feedback.
We’ll all constantly be tossing out ideas for poems, shaping exercises for in-class writing that will sometimes lead to poems, and writing in class (often on the spur of the moment, to use a cliché), so you should have plenty of poetry taking shape in your notebook. Please do bring a notebook and pen to class each session, therefore. Eight finished poems, then, should be in your portfolio, although you might have as many as 8 or 10.
Required Texts
Please purchase these texts, do the assigned reading, and bring the pertinent books to class.
Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellmann, and Robert O’Clair, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Volume 2: Contemporary Poetry. Third Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.
Alfred Corn, The Poem’s Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody. Ashland, Oregon: Story Line Press, 2001.
Ron Padgett, A Handbook of Poetic Forms. New York: Teachers and Writers Collaborative, 1987.
You will also select and read an additional book of poetry by one author, and you will make a presentation on this book and author, but you may borrow the book from a library, if you choose to do so.
Elements on Which Your Grade Will Be Based
Portfolio: 60 per cent
Presentation on a book of poetry, plus two tests: 20 per cent, total. The tests will cover material we study in Alfred Corn’s book, material from the “Introduction” to the Norton Anthology, and poems we read for and discuss in class, so it’s a good idea, of course, to keep up with the reading, to take notes in class, and to ask questions about things you think you do not understand.
Participation (class discussions, in-class writing and reading, group work, conferences, contribution to the classroom environment, attendance, etc.): 20 per cent. Coming to class, on time and prepared, is crucial. Missing class or coming to class late will affect your grade negatively.
Extra Credit: You will receive extra if you a) never miss a class, except in case of illness or emergency and b) if you are never late to class.
Extra Credit, Part II: You will receive extra credit if you attend a poetry reading on campus, or in Tacoma, or in Seattle, and write and submit a brief response to me (one page, word-processed, double-spaced).
Monday, August 28. Overview of the course. Please read the syllabus carefully and begin to decide whether you want to remain in the course. If the syllabus suggests to you that you may not enjoy the class, you have the option of taking English 403 in Spring 2007 (for example). Some writing in class, on “the spur of the moment.”
Wednesday, August 30. In The Poem’s Heartbeat, please read “Unmetered Verse,” which begins on p. 123. In the Norton, please read “Pacific Lament” and “That Thing Was Moving,” by Charles Olsen; “Legacy” and “A New Reality,” by Amiri Baraka; “Fish,” by Elizabeth Bishop; “Our Ground Time . . .” and “Bliss,” by Maxine Kumin.
Friday, September 1. Poem due, word processed, original plus three copies. A brief review of group-work. Smaller groups. Turn in one clean copy of the poem to me, please.
Monday, September 4. Labor Day. No class-meeting
Wednesday, September 6. For today, read pages xliii to lii in the “Introduction” to the Norton Anthology. Also read “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” by Randall Jarrell, “For the Union Dead,” by Robert Lowell, and “Epilogue,” by Robert Lowell.
Friday, September 8. For today, in The Poem’s Heartbeat, please read Chapter 1, “Line and Stress.” Also please read “The Death of a Toad” and “Playboy,” by Richard Wilbur. Please scan (as in scansion) these two poems.
Monday, September 11. For today, a new poem is due, the original plus at least 4 copies. Larger groups, of 7 or 8. Submit one clean copy to me, please.
Wednesday, September 13. Group work, continued.
Friday, September 15. For today, please read Chapter Two of Corn’s book, “Accentual-Syllabic Verse.” In the Norton, please read all of the poems by Dylan Thomas. Take notes concerning what you want to say about these poems.
Monday, September 18. Continue discussion of Chapter Two and Thomas’s poems. Working with accentual-syllabic verse in class.
Wednesday, September 20th. For today, please read the four poems by Karl Shapiro in the Norton. As always, make some notes.
Friday, September 22nd. For today, a poem is due, plus 4-8 copies. Larger groups.
Monday, September 25. Group work, continued.
Wednesday, September 27. For today, please read Chapter Three of Corn’s book, “Metrical Variation.” Working with variation in class.
Friday, September 29. For today, in the Norton, please read the poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. How does she work with metrical variation? Locate some specific examples that you especially like.
Monday, October 2. For today, please read Chapter Four of Corn’s book, “Phonic Echo.” Some writing in class.
Wednesday, October 4. For today, a poem is due, the original plus three copies. Turn in a copy to me. Smaller groups.
Friday, October 6. For today, in Corn’s book, please read Chapter Five, “Stanza.” In the Norton, please read “Snowflakes,” by Howard Nemerov, “This Be the Verse,” by Philip Larkin, and “Traveling Through the Dark,” by William Stafford.
Monday, October 9. Review for the test, which will cover that part of the Norton “Introduction” that we have read, Chapters 1-5 and Chapter 10 of The Poem’s Heartbeat, and the poetry we have read.
Wednesday, October 11. Test.
Friday, October 13. Bring in a revision of one of your earlier poems for this class—the original plus two copies.
[Fall Break]
Wednesday, October 18. For today, in Corn’s book, please read Chapter 6, “Verse Forms.” In Padgett’s book, please read the entries for Ballad, Blank Verse, Couplet, Ottava Rima, Sestina, Sonnet, and Villanelle.
Friday, October 20. A draft of a verse-form poem is due. Options: Ballad, Blank Verse,
Sonnet, one or two stanzas of Ottava Rima, Sestina, Villanelle, or a poem in couplets. Please look ahead to October 27.
Monday, October 23. Verse-form poem due, with 4-8 copies. Please turn in one clean copy to me. Larger groups.
Wednesday, October 25. Group work, continued.
Friday, October 27. For today, please read pages li to the end of the “Introduction” to the Norton Anthology. How would you summarize the developments discussed in this part of the “Introduction”? For today, you need to have selected the extra book of poetry that you will read and on which you will report. Sign up for reports. Between next week and the end of the term, each of you will visit my office hours and report on the book. You will provide some biographical background of the author, give an overview of the book, discuss at least one of the poems in depth, and answer questions.
Monday, October 30. For today, please read, in the Norton, “Dog,” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Naughty Boy,” “A Wicker Basket,” “For Love,” and “`I Keep to Myself Such Measures,’” by Robert Creeley. Sign up for Wednesday’s assignment. Three people will sign up for one of the following five statements at the back of the Norton:
Dylan Thomas, Philip Larkin, Frank O’Hara, Denise Levertov, and Seamus Heaney.
Wednesday, November 1. For today, please read the poems by Audre Lorde in the Norton. Some writing in class.
Friday, November 3. Three groups of five will summarize the statements of poetics for one another. Keep your summary to 5-8 minutes, please. Thanks!
Monday, November 6. Poem due, with 4-8 copies, one clean copy for me. Larger groups.
Wednesday, November 8. Group work, continued.
Friday, November 10. For today, please read “Daddy,” by Sylvia Plath, “Homo Will Not Inherit,” by Mark Doty, and “Crystals,” by Thylias Moss. You might call this “tough subject” day. Please
Monday, November 13. For today, please read “Fork” and “Watch Repair” by Charles Simic. How does surrealism in poetry work? For today, bring in an ordinary object from your abode. It should not be a weapon. It should be fairly small. It should be something appropriate for mixed company. It should not be perishable. Some kind of ordinary solid object. Writing in class.
Wednesday, November 15. Field trip. Bring notebook and pen.
Friday, November 17. For today, choose one poem from the Norton that a) we have not read for class and that b) you especially like. Discuss the portfolio, which should include approximately 8 revised poems and a brief (1-2 pages, word-processed, double-spaced) statement about how your poetry has developed this term.
Monday, November 20. Poem due, the original plus three copies. Smaller groups.
Wednesday, November 22. TBA.
Monday, November 27. In Padgett’s book, please read the entries fro Lune, Pantoum, Cinquain, Ritual Poem, Senryu, and Epistle.
Wednesday, November 29. Form-poem due (forms from November 27).
Friday, December 1. Review for test, which will cover the second part of the term but may include some questions from the first test.
Monday, December 4. Test.
Wednesday, December 6. Bring in one or two revised poems on which to get some feedback. Portfilio is due on Wednesday of Finals Week before 4:00 p.m., my office.