English 203                                                                           Spring 2008

Introduction to Creative Writing (Poetry)                             Professor Ostrom

MWF 2:00 Wyatt 308

My Office: Wyatt 336. Office-Hours for Spring 2008: Tuesdays, 10:00-12:30, and by appointment, of course.

English Department’s telephone: x3235 (messages); my telephone: x3434 (voice mail). Electronic mail: ostrom@ups.edu. The English Department’s mailboxes are located in the room next to the Philosophy Department’s main office on the third floor of Wyatt Hall. 

Home page: www.ups.edu/faculty/ostrom/. A copy of this syllabus will be posted on the home page.

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.

Aims of the Course

English 203 explores the process of writing poetry, so it necessarily features much writing and revising, in and out of class.  Reading the textbook and the anthology will familiarize us with important poetry published in English; just as musicians and painters study the compositions and paintings that have come before, we will enrich our awareness of poetry from a variety of traditions.  We will also build up a lexicon necessary to the study of poetry-writing, and we will assemble and deploy a variety of techniques appropriate to all stages of the writing-and-revising process.  A course in writing poetry is obviously a public, cooperative way of studying the art, so anyone who believes that writing poetry must be a solitary, reclusive process will not find the venue productive, and anyone who takes such a course is invited to work to make the venue productive.  In some ways, English 203 will demystify poetry and the writing of it; in other ways it will honor the persistent mysteries of art in general and poetry in particular.  To a great extent, writing poetry is hard work, but it is often pleasurably hard work, and it is not only hard work.  Spontaneity, intuition, improvisation, accident, wit, and luck are also involved. 

In the unlikely event you thought, back in November, that taking the course would be an effortless way to accumulate academic credit, please reconsider your decision to take English 203, for you may be disappointed in how much the course asks of you.  I don’t offer this advice out of malice but simply based on experience.  The same advice is operative in the event you believe poetry shouldn’t be analyzed or studied.

A poem is a piece of art made of words.  The arrangement of words tends to be more concentrated than other kinds of arrangements, such as essays or textbooks, and customarily it emphasizes the ways in which words on the page create images and sounds in the mind.  It is not necessarily a spoken art, but to a large extent it remains one Consequently, we will often read our poems and the poetry of others out loud.  The purpose of doing so is chiefly practical: reading work out loud sharpens our awareness of the words on the page and of what is working and what is not.  So please don’t think that by inviting you to read out loud I’m trying to put you on the spot or that I’m looking for a performance.  The idea is simply to hear the words in addition to seeing them. I will do my fair share of reading aloud, too.

And finally, I should alert you to the fact that we will write spontaneously in class sometimes, without much warning—not that it’s a dangerous thing that suggests a warning is necessary.

Briefly, About the Professor

Sometimes students want to know a bit about the professor; in a paragraph, here’s a bit: I’ve taught at the University of Puget Sound for quite some time.  My relationship with poetry is multifaceted.  I have enjoyed reading it for decades.  I studied it when I was an undergraduate English major and then when I was a doctoral student, going so far as to write a dissertation on poetry from the British Romantic period, circa 1789-1832.  However, I also write and publish poetry. Much of the poetry I published in magazines and anthologies has been collected in The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006 (Indianapolis, 2006). I have also published articles and books on how to write poetry and how to teach creative writing.  For example, I’m a co-author of Metro: Journeys in Writing Creatively (Longman, 2001).  At Puget Sound I also teach the first-year seminar in writing and rhetoric, Introduction to English Studies, fiction-writing, and a variety of courses in literature.  Welcome to English 203.

The Etiquette and Atmosphere of the Course

Here are some guidelines to which all of us should adhere. None of them will be surprising or difficult. In fact, 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.                                                                                                      

1.  Please do attend class unless you are ill or otherwise indisposed, and please do arrive on time.  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. 
2. To some degree, a college classroom has become an old fashioned, counter-cultural space that asks us to lengthen our attention-spans when the culture at large seeks to shorten them.  Please do listen while others are talking. Although conversations on the side are usually not intended to be rude or disruptive, they can have that effect. Respect each other and yourselves. Before class begins, turn off the electronic devices. If you use a lap-top computer in class, please use it only to take notes, not to get on the Internet or otherwise distract yourself and others. Please do not habitually get up and leave class.  I realize that, every so often, one needs to leave class for a few minutes.  But more than every so often is not appropriate. Becoming a poet requires stamina, persistence, resilience, and patience. Contrary to popular opinion, poets are tough-minded lot. Unlike squirrels, they’re not skittish.
3. Please do your best. The more each of us contributes to the course, the more each of us will get out of it. Please do not plagiarize.
4. Please turn in work and complete reading-assignments on time. But also please ask me to clarify assignments and guidelines if they are unclear, and please let me know if an illness or an emergency has prevented you from completing your work on time.
5. Please do acquire the books required for the course, read them according to the syllabus, and bring them to class on the appropriate days. Acquire the editions I’ve ordered through the bookstore, even if you do not buy them at the bookstore. 
6. Please don’t eat in class (every professor has his or her pet-peeves); a cup of coffee (for example) is fine, however.

Required Books

Kevin Clark, The Mind’s Eye: A Guide to Writing Poetry.  New York: Pearson Longman, 2008.

Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, editors, The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Fifth edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005. Please do acquire the fifth edition.

Elements on Which Your Final Grade Will Be Based

A portfolio of poems you have written and revised in the course: 50 per cent, approximately.

Your participation: coming to class regularly, on time, and prepared; contributing productively to discussions and workshop-sessions; doing the work of the course: 25 per cent, approximately.  See “The Etiquette and Atmosphere of the Course” above and the schedule below for more details on what is expected in the way of participation.

Two tests on reading and terminology: 25 per cent (total), approximately.  Appended to the syllabus are a list of terms and a list of poets; the tests will be related significantly to these lists.

Extra credit: Attend a poetry reading, on campus or in the community, and write a brief (one page) response to the reading.  Submit the response to me.

Unit: What Is a Poem, How Do We Write One, and Why Do We Write and Read Poetry?

Wednesday, January 23. Overview of the course.  Please read the syllabus carefully, in class and after the first session, see if you have any questions about it, and to see if indeed you want to remain in the course.  Defining poetry. Discussing the process of writing poems.

Friday, January 25.  For today, please read the Introduction and Chapter One of The Mind’s Eye.

Monday, January 28.  Write a new poem for today, no longer than a page, typed, with a title and your name.  Bring one copy for me, one for you, and one for a classmate (total = 3). Guidelines for and a practice-run of responding to classmates’ poems.

Wednesday, January 30.  For today, please read Chapter Two of The Mind’s Eye.

Friday, February 1.  Full-class workshop.  Poem due, no longer than one page, typed.  You will need a copy for me, a copy for you, and a copy for at least every other student in class (total = 11 or 12).  This will be our only full-class workshop of the term because a workshop of 20 or so students takes up a lot of time.  However, one full-class session will help establish the best practices for responding to poems. During the rest of the term, you will work in smaller groups when responding to and presenting poems. This is an excellent time to read ahead, so start reading “Versification,” by Jon Stallworthy, in the Norton anthology, pp. 2027-2052.  Take notes.

Monday, February 4.  Workshop, continued.

Wednesday, February 6. Workshop, continued.

Friday, February 8. Workshop, continued.

Monday, February 11.  Workshop concluded.

Unit: How Poetry Has Changed

Wednesday, February 13. For today, please read The Mind’s Eye, Chapter III. In the Norton anthology, please read “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” 1553, “We Real Cool,” 1588, “The Simple Truth,” 1763, “Dusting,” 1987, and “Valentine,” 1948.

Friday, February 15. Some key poems: For today, please read Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” 1232, Stevens, “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” 1256, Williams, “This Is Just To Say,” 1274, Lawrence, “Snake,” 1286, Pound, “In a Station of the Metro,” 1297, Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” 1340, Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” 1387, cummings, “since feeling is first,” 1394.

Monday, February 18. Guided writing, in class.

Wednesday, February 20.  Poem due.  One copy for me, one copy for you, and at least three copies for your group (total = at least 5).  Workshop.

Friday, February 22.  Workshop.

Unit: Basics of Formal Verse and Prosody

Monday, February 25.  For today, please go over your notes from having read “Versification,” by Jon Stallworthy, in the Norton anthology, pp. 2027-2052, and please read The Mind’s Eye, Chapter 8. In the Norton, please read “Peaches,” by Peter Davison, 1752.

Wednesday, February 27. More key poems: Shakespeare, “Sonnet 18,” 259, Donne, “The Flea,” 309, Blake, “The Tyger,” 743, Wordsworth, “Surprised by Joy,” 804, Hopkins, “The Windhover,” 1166, Housman, “To an Athlete Dying Young,” 1174, Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 1196, Robinson, “Richard Cory,” 1212, Hughes, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” 1430, Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel,” 1446, Roethke, “The Waking,” 1500.

Friday, February 29. For today, please read The Mind’s Eye, Chapter Four.  Some guided writing focused on sound, meter, verse.

Unit: Persons, Places, Things, and Scenes

Monday, March 3.  For today, please read The Mind’s Eye, Chapter Five.  Review for test.

Wednesday, March 5.  Poem due. Same number of copies as usual. Workshop.

Friday, March 7.  Workshop.

Monday, March 10. Test.

Wednesday, March 12.  Guided writing.

Friday, March 14.  Field trip. Ekphrasis.

Monday, March 24. Thing-poems. Please read Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” 1166, Moore, “To a Chameleon,” 1328, Simic, “Watch Repair,” 1891, Ormsby, “Starfish” and “Skunk Cabbage,” 1925, 1926, Komunyakaa, “Facing It,” 1949, Zarin, “The Ant Hill,” 2013.

Wednesday, March 26.  Poem due. The usual number of copies.  Workshop.

Friday, March 28.  . Workshop.

Monday, March 31.  For today, please read The Mind’s Eye, Chapter 6.

Unit: Sympathy, Sadness, Surprise, Love, Loss, and Left Field

Wednesday, April 2. For today, please read Parker, “Unfortunate Coincidence,” 1391, Graves, “Love Without Hope,” 1400, Hughes, “Harlem,” 1433, Cullen, “Incident,” 1446, Eberhart, “The Fury of Aerial Bombardment,” 1450, Auden, “Lullaby,” 1465, Kock, “You Were Wearing,” “Variations,” and “To My Twenties,” 1692-94, Ginsberg, from Howl, 1708.

Friday, April 4. Guided Writing.

Monday, April 7.  Poem due.  The usual number of copies.  Workshop

Wednesday, April 9.  Workshop.

Friday, April 11.  Poem due.  The usual number of copies.  Workshop.

Monday, April 14. For today, please read The Mind’s Eye, Chapter Twelve.  Please look ahead to April 18 and begin your search for a love poem.

Wednesday, April 16.  Bring in two or three of your poems, as is—ones you’d especially like to revise.  Guided revision.

Friday, April 18.  For today, please choose a love poem, the definition of which is up to you, from the Norton anthology that we have not yet read for class and that you especially like. 

Monday, April 21. Poem due.  The usual number of copies.  Workshop.

Wednesday, April 23.  Workshop.

Friday, April 25.  For today, please read The Mind’s Eye, Chapter 13.

Monday, April 28.. For today, please read The Mind’s Eye, chapter 14. Review for test.

Wednesday April 30.  Poe due. The usual number of copies. Workshop.

Friday, May 2.  Workshop.

Monday, May 5.  Test.

Wednesday, May 7.  Review guidelines for portfolio.

Portfolio due at my office, Wyatt 336, by 4:00 p.m. on May 14.