English 403—Advanced Creative Writing: Poetry Fall 2008
Professor Hans Ostrom
Welcome to English 403. Here is some basic information:
My office: 336 Wyatt Hall. Office hours: Monday and Wednesday, 3:00-4:30 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, chiefly 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 improvise upon what we read rather than imitating mechanically, and often we’ll create these ideas for poetry together. The directed writing will not be rigid, in other words. Together we’ll often brainstorm ideas for poems, so have a notebook handy and write down these ideas.
You'll present drafts of poems to one or two classmates, to your group, to the whole class (in a couple of instances), 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. Seven 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.
Jay Parini, editor. The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry. New York: Thomson/Pearson, 2006.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing. New York: W.W. Norton, 1979.
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 to me 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 Richard Hugo’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. Attendance guidelines: Each absence after the third one will start to erode your final grade. Each late arrival after the second one counts as an absence.
Extra Credit: 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). You may repeat the extra credit up to three times.
Wednesday, September 3. 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 2008 (for example) from another professor. Some writing in class, on “the spur of the moment.” Get started on the reading for Friday because there is a lot of it.
Friday, September 5 In the Wadsworth anthology, Ch. 14, please read the 23rd Psalm, Jeffers, “Boats in the Fog,” James Wright, “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry,” Diane DiPrima, “Back Yard,” and Charles Wright. Please also read, in Hugo’s book, “In Defense of Creative Writing Classes.” And in Padgett’s book, please read “Free Verse.”
Monday, September 8. 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.
Wednesday, September 10. Please read Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By, Chapters 1, 2,
and 3.
Friday, September 12. In Hugo’s book, please read “Nuts and Bolts.” In Padgett’s book, please read “Foot.” In Chapter 9 of the anthology, please read the first 98 lines of Samuel Johnson’s “Vanity of Human Wishes,” and read “The Stream,” by Mona Van Duyn. Please scan (as in scansion) lines from these two poems; mark the stressed and unstressed syllables.
Monday, September 15. 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 17. Group work, continued.
Friday, September 19. In the anthology, please read “If I Could Tell You,” by W.H. Auden, “Do Not Go Gentle,” by Dylan Thomas, “After the Terror,” by Jay Parini, “An Elegy for Bob Marley,” by William Matthews, and “Tiara,” by Mark Doty. In Padgett’s book, please read “Villanelle,” “Ode,” and “Elegy.”
Monday, September 22. In Chapter 20 of the Wadsworth anthology, please read Frost, “The Most of It,” Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” MacNiece, “Sunlight in the Garden,” Rich, “What Kind of Times Are These,” and Billy Collins, “Morning.”
Wednesday, September 24. For today, a poem is due, plus enough copies for every other person in class. Full-class workshop.
Friday, September 26. Full-class workshop, continued.
Monday, September 29. Full-class workshop, continued.
Wednesday, October 1. Full-class workshop, concluded.
Friday, October 3. For today, please read, in Hugo’s book, “Writing Off the Subject” and “The Triggering Town.” Be able to explain in your own terms the concept of writing “off” the subject, and think about how to adapt the concept of “the triggering town” to your own way of writing and to things about which you write.
Monday, October 6. For today, in Lakoff’s book, please read Chapters 7, 8, and 16
Wednesday, October 8. For today, in the anthology, please read “Grandfather,” by Michael Harper, “A Martian Sends a Postcard [. . .]”, by Craig Raine, “Family Reunion,” by Louise Erdrich, “Too Young to Know,” by Cornelius Eady.
Friday October 10. For today, in Hugo’s book, please read “Assumptions” and “Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching.” Review for test.
Monday, October 13. For today, a poem is due, the original plus several copies. Turn in a copy to me. Larger groups.
Wednesday, October 15. Group work, continued.
Friday, October 17. First Test.
Monday, October 20. No class-meeting. Fall Break.
Wednesday, October 22. For today, please read “Blank Verse,” “Sonnet,” and “Stanza” in Padgett’s book. In Chapter 10 of the anthology, please read the sonnets by Caroline Norton, Countee Cullen, Jack Gilbert, and Sherman Alexie.
Friday, October 24. Bring in a revision of one of your earlier poems for this class—the original plus two copies.
Monday, October 27. In Padgett’s book, please read the entries for Ballad, Couplet, Ottava Rima, and Sestina. In the anthology, please read “Among School Children,” b Yeats, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol,” by Bob Dylan, and “Nani,” by Alberto Rios.
Wednesday, October 29. 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.
Friday, October 31. Verse-form poem due, with 4-8 copies. Please turn in one clean copy to me. Larger groups. Please look ahead to November 5.
Monday, November 3. Group work, continued.
Wednesday, November 5. 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. Also for today, please choose a poem you like from Chapter 16 of the anthology and be able to discuss the poem. Discuss November 10’s assignment: In groups of 4, you will discuss and analyze for the group a poem from Chapter 22 of the anthology. Sign up Friday.
Friday, November 7. Sign up for Monday’s assignment. Field trip.
Monday, November 10. Group presentations.
Wednesday, November 12. Poem due, with 4-8 copies, one clean copy for me. Larger groups.
Friday, November 14. Group work, continued.
Monday, November 17. Please read “Dover Beach,” by Matthew Arnold, 1594, and “The Dover Bitch,” by Anthony Hecht, and be able to discuss your responses to the poems.
Wednesday, November 19. For today, in the anthology, read both versions of “Cuttings,” by Theodore Roethke and Josephine Miles’s poem, “Inhabiting and Orange,” and Charles Simic’s poem, “Fork.” In Padgett’s book, please read “List Poem,” which contains a poem by surrealist André Breton. 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.
Friday, November 21. Poem due, with copies. Larger groups.
Monday, November 24. Group work, continued.
Wednesday, November 26. No class-meeting. Travel day.
Monday, December 1. For today, please read Chapter 30 of Lakoff’s book.
Wednesday, December 3. Bring a revised poem, please (original plus one copy). Review for test..
Friday, December 5. Review for test. Writing in class.
Monday, December 8. Test.
Wednesday, December 10. Poetry reading.