English 340: Genre—Poetry Fall 2007
Traditions of American and British Lyric Poetry
Professor Hans Ostrom
Welcome to English 340. Here is some basic information:
My office: 336 Wyatt Hall. Office hours: Tuesdays, 9:00-11:00 a.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.
Some Aims of the Course
This course will examine lyric poetry in British and American literature, although we will also consider trans-Atlantic, transnational, and post-colonial influences. One main approach will be to study poems in categories of lyric poetry: ballad, blank verse (mainly as used in shorter poems, not in plays or epic poems), elegy, ode, sestina, sonnet, and villanelle. Another approach will be to study lyric poems on similar broad topics, such as love, war, politics, and art.
We will read and interpret poems closely, but not at the expense of biographical, cultural, historical, and theoretical issues we find pertinent. Of course, much of the poetry in the lyric tradition is in formal verse; consequently, the course will thoroughly cover elements of prosody, which the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language defines as “[t]he theory and practice of versification; (in technical use) the branch of knowledge which deals with the forms of metrical composition, and formerly also with the pronunciation of words, esp. as this relates to versification; (more generally) the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry” (OED electronic database). We will spend time familiarizing ourselves with meter, rhyme, rhythm, poetic syntax, stanzas, lines, and concepts of accentual-syllabic verse, but we will also observe how these elements actually work in particular poems, in the hands of writers, and across the eras of literary art.
A Prosody Handbook (first published in 1965), by Karl Shapiro and Robert Beum, will aid our understanding of the subject. Early in the book, Shapiro and Beum write, “To study prosody is to go beyond immediate appreciation and to try to discover some of the means by which poetry produces its particular effects. Prosody is for those who wish to go behind the scenes.”
Why go behind the scenes of poetry, and indeed, why study poetry at all? Aren’t there more pressing issues, such as poverty, war, and environmental catastrophe, not to mention our individual struggles with money, time, work, the dentist, and all the rest? These are fair questions. Although poets have a reputation —sometimes deservedly so—for writing about what seems to be rarefied, inessential, or precious, on closer inspection most of them tend to write about such essentials as work, death, love, nature, war, food, sex, and loss. Take a look, for example, at Sir Walter Raleigh’s poem, “The Lie,” in our anthology. Here is a poem and a poet getting to the heart of matters in which every human being has a stake.
Nonetheless, as W.H. Auden argued in his poem, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”:
[…]For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
Roughly a century earlier, P.B. Shelley, in the essay “In Defense of Poetry,” argued that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” implying that poetry can make something happen.
For the sake of argument, let’s agree with Auden, disagree with Shelley, and momentarily stipulate that poetry makes nothing happen. A subject’s capacity to make something happen may not be the only good criterion for why we should study the subject. Moreover, studying poetry may at least help a person reflect productively on what has happened, what might happen, and what should not happen, so assuming productive reflection is a good thing, we may have found a reason to study poetry, even if a poem doesn’t make anything besides reflection happen.
Believe it or not, there is also at least one practical reason to study poetry, at least if you are likely to pursue professions and other endeavors that involve interpreting complicated language, which may be found in law, advertising, education, politics, business, science, the non-profit sector, journalism, religion, and technology. Most poems are highly compressed, complicated texts; even apparently simple lyric poems are usually deceptively complicated pieces of art—and pieces of rhetoric, the art of making a case. Learning how to take poems apart and put them back together again is great training; it requires discipline, tenacity, and wit. There is a good case to be made, then, for studying poetry—in addition to the fact that you made need to complete this course in order to earn your undergraduate degree. In a roundabout way, poetry may be able to make graduation happen.
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.
1. Please do attend class unless you are ill or otherwise indisposed, and please do try to arrive on time. I will try to do the same. 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. Please do listen while others are talking. I will do the same. Although conversations on the side are usually not intended to be rude or disruptive, they can have that effect. Respect each other and yourselves. To some degree, a college classroom has become an old fashioned, counter-cultural space that now competes with our compulsive needs to communicate electronically, so before class begins, turn off the electronic devices. If you use a laptop to take notes, please resist the temptation to get on the Internet.
3. Please do your best. The more each of us contributes to the course, the more each of us will get out of it. Bring something to the table.
4. Please turn in work and complete reading-assignments on time. Do not assume that late work will be accepted. 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 buy all of the books required for the course, read them according to the syllabus, and bring them to class on the appropriate days. Do take pleasure in the works that appeal immediately to you, but also maintain patience with works that do not. Resist the urge to “reject” works you find difficult and works you think you may have already “solved.”
6. Please don’t eat in class (every professor has his or her pet-peeves); a cup of coffee (for example) is fine, however.
7. Do your own work; don’t plagiarize. The University’s guidelines for responding to plagiarism are severe. If you are having difficulty with an assignment, talk to me—the sooner the better.
Required Texts
Jay Parini, editor, The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry. New York: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006.
Karl Shapiro and Robert Beum, A Prosody Handbook. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2006. First published in 1965 by Harper & Row.
Elements on Which Your Final Grade Will Be Based
Percentages are approximate. There is always a holistic aspect to assigning a final grade.
Productive participation in class discussions and tasks: 20%. 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. Many absences and/or late arrivals are likely to erode your final grade well beyond the 20%.
Two Essays: approximately 50%, total.
Two Tests: Approximately 20%, total.
An original poem in a traditional form: 10%. In the unlikely event that news of this assignment terrifies you, please rest easy. Many options and explanations will be revealed, in due time, and the chief purpose of this assignment is to invite you to go behind the scenes of poetry by writing a poem.
Extra credit: Attend a poetry reading on campus or in the community and write a one-page response. You may repeat the extra credit up to three times.
Schedule of Reading and Assignments
Wednesday, September 5. Overview of the course and the syllabus. A pre-test.
Unit One: The Short Lyric; Basics of Prosody—Syllables and The Foot
Friday, September 7. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, please read the first two short chapters, “Prosody as a Study” and “Poetry and Verse.” In the anthology, please read pages 599-601, and in that chapter, please read “The Lie,” by Sir Walter Raleigh, “When to Her Lute Corinna Sings,” by Thomas Campion, and “To His Conscience,” by Robert Herrick.
Monday, September 10. For today, in the anthology, please read “My Heart Leaps Up” and “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” by William Wordsworth, “Everything Passes….,” by William Allingham, the two poems by Emily Dickinson (pp. 632-633), “Richard Cory,” by Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Dust of Snow,” by Robert Frost, and “Sea-Fever,” by John Masefield.
Wednesday, September 12. For today, read the chapter on “Syllables” in Shapiro and Beum, and be sure to bring the anthology.
Friday, September 14. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, please read the chapters on “The Foot,” “The Line,” and “Accentual and Syllabic Verse.” Please be sure to bring the anthology, too.
Monday, September 17. For today, please read “To a Dark Girl,” by Gwendolyn Bennett, “A Black Man Talks of Reaping,” by Arna Bontemps, “Hell,” by W.H. Auden, “Sadie and Maud,” by Gwendolyn Brooks, “Fork,” by Charles Simic, “To a Poor Old Woman,” by William Carlos Williams, and “Snow,” by Philip Levine.
Unit Two: Blank Verse
Wednesday, September 19. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, please read the chapter on “Blank Verse.” In the anthology, please read pages 655-657. Please read the excerpt from Paradise Lost; please read “Frost at Midnight,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Friday, September 21. For today, please read “Sunday Morning,” by Wallace Stevens and “Indian Song,” by Major Jackson.
Monday, September 24. For today, bring two photocopies of a favorite page from a favorite play by William Shakespeare. The only other stipulation is that the lines on the page should be in blank verse—not rhymed. Occasionally, Shakespeare will include rhyming songs in his plays, for instance, but we’re looking for blank verse.
Unit Three: Thematic Interlude—On War
Wednesday, September 26. For today, please read pages 1101-1103 in the anthology, and read “Bars Fight,” by Lucy Terry; “The Second Coming,” by W.B. Yeats; “Dead Man’s Dump,” by Isaac Rosenberg; “Dulce et Decorum Est,” by Wilfred Owen; “i sing of Olaf glad and big,” by e.e. cummings; “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” by Randall Jarrell; “The Hearth,” by C.K. Williams; “R.A.F.,” by H.D. Distribute poems by Brian Turner.
[There will be a reading of “Spiritual Poetry” on Thursday, September 27, at 6:00 p.m. in Trimble Forum.]
Friday, September 28. For today, please read, in the anthology, “Epitaph for a Tyrant,” by W.H. Auden, “Against the War in Viet Nam,” by Wendell Berry, “For the Union Dead,” by Robert Lowell, “Keeping Their World Large,” by Marianne Moore, and “Still Falls the Rain,” by Edith Sitwell. Also please read the poems by Brian Turner.
Monday, October 1. Finish discussing poems about war.
Unit Four: Meter, Rhythm, Rhyme
Wednesday, October 3. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, please read the chapters on “Meter and Rhythm” and “The Uses of Meter.” In the anthology, please read “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ode on Melancholy,” by John Keats. Also please read “The Windhover,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Friday, October 5. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, please read the chapters on “Rhyme” and “The Uses of Rhyme.” In the anthology, please read “Ballad of the Landlord,” by Langston Hughes, “Miss Gee,” by W.H. Auden, and “Ballad of Birmingham,” by Dudley Randall.
Meter, Rhythm, and Rhyme, Continued—With an Emphasis on Love Poems
Monday, October 8. For today, please read “On Monsieur’s Departure,” by Queen Elizabeth Tudor I, “The Ecstasy,” by John Donne, “The Kiss,” by Charlotte Dacre, “Sonnet LXI,” by Michael Drayton, “Love is not all,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and “Lullaby,” by W.H. Auden.
Wednesday, October 10. For today, please read “Homosexuality,” by Frank O’Hara, “homage to my hips,” by Lucille Clifton, “Breasts,” by Charles Simic, “Beautiful Black Men,” by Nikki Giovanni, and “Twenty-Year Marriage,” by Ai. First essay assigned, discussed.
Friday, October 12. Continue discussing love poems. Review for test.
Monday, October 15. Test. (You should be working on a draft of your essay.)
Unit Five: The Sonnet
Wednesday, October 17. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, please read the chapter on “The Sonnet.” In the anthology, please read pages 796-799 and read the sonnets by Shakespeare on pages 803-806.
Friday, October 19. Continue discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets. Distribute copies of Cullen’s “Yet Do I Marvel.”
Wednesday, October 24. Draft of essay due.
Friday, October 26. For today, please read Anne Seward, “Sonnet”; William Wordsworth, “Composed Upon Westminster Bridge”; the sonnets by E.B. Browning on pages 814; Claude McKay, “The Harlem Dancers”; Seamus Heaney, “ The Forge”; Rita Dove, “History”; Sherman Alexie, “Sonnet: Tattoo Tears.”
Monday, October 29. Essay due. Writing a “sound sonnet.”
Unit Six: The Ballad
Wednesday, October 31. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, read the section in “Stanza Forms” concerning the quatrain. In the anthology, please read pages 449-452, and read William Wordsworth, “Lucy Gray”; John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”; Edward Lear, “The Owl and the Pussycat”; Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”; Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Miniver Cheevy”; Anne Sexton, “The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator”; and Bob Dylan, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol.”
Friday, November 2. Continue discussing ballads.
Unit Seven: Free Verse
Monday, November 5. For today, in Shapiro and Beum, please read the chapter on free verse. In the anthology, please read pages 923-927. Read the first 10 poems in Mark Halliday’s Jab.
Wednesday, November 7. In the anthology, please read Psalm 23, Robinson Jeffers, “Boats in Fog,” e.e. cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s/defunct,” Adrienne Rich, “Diving Into the Wreck,” and Rita Dove, “Dusting.”
Friday, November 9. For today, read more poems in Halliday’s Jab.
Unit Eight: Poems as Rhetoric and Argument
Monday, November 12. For today, read W.H. Auden, “Museé des Beaux Arts,” Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” Shakespeare, “Sonnet 18,” and a poem, to be announced, by Halliday.
Wednesday, November 14. For today, in the anthology, please read “Poem About My Rights,” By June Jordan, “Power,” by Audre Lorde, “Barbie Doll,” by Marge Piercy, “Parsley,” by Rita Dove, “After the Survivors Have Gone,” by Peter Balakian, and “The Colonel,” by Carolyn Forché.
Friday, November 16. For today, in the anthology, please read “The White Man’s Burden,” by Rudyard Kipling, “Shine, Perishing Republic,” by Robinson Jeffers, “ e.e.cummings, “next to of course god america i,” “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes, and “Poem,” by Muriel Rukeyser.
Monday, November 19. Writing.
Unit Nine: Stanza Forms
Monday, November 26. Essay assigned, discussed. Assignment for the form-poem discussed. In Shapiro and Beum, please read the chapter on “Stanza Forms,” and pay particular attention to the villanelle and the sestina. In the anthology, please read W.H. Auden, “If I Could Tell You,” Theodore Roethke, “The Waking,” Elizabeth Bishop, “Sestina,” and Anthony Hecht, “The Book of Yolek.” Also, choose villanelles and sestinas you would like to read for Wednesday.
Wednesday, November 28. More villanelles and sestinas.
Friday, November 30. Draft of your form-poem due.
Monday, December 3. More poems in stanzas. Review for test.
Wednesday, December 5. Test.
Friday, December 7. Form poem due.
Monday, December 10. Draft of essay due.
Wednesday, December 12. Reading our favorite poems.
Tuesday, December 18. Essay due at my office by 4:00 p.m.