Professor Hans Ostrom

Office: Wyatt 336

Office Hours: Mondays and Fridays, 9:30-11:00, and by appointment. I am around the office a lot; come by to talk about poetry.

Telephone numbers: x3434 (voice mail); x3235 (English Department)

Electronic mail: ostrom@ups.edu Home page: www.ups.edu/faculty/ostrom/

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

Welcome to English 340, Genre: Poetry. One purpose of the course is to give you the opportunity to study poetry as a distinct type of literature. We will focus on lyric poetry, which, temporarily, we will define as shorter poetry.

Genres of any art bring with them conventions, as well as traditions of breaking or bending those conventions. Genres also involve technical elements that invite and reward analysis. Poetry is no different in this respect; therefore, a course like this will appeal to you if examining questions of form intrigues you, if asking questions about literary conventions interests you, and if analysis of technique, but also many other kinds of close reading, please you.

We will not study poetry in a vacuum. That would deprive us of oxygen, which is necessary in the study of poetry. Indeed, by focusing on twentieth-century American poetry, we will be able to examine social, historical, and political effects on the art of poetry; we will be able to ask how and why a genre changes over several years and decades; and we will be able to ask why certain poets, poems, uses of language, and types of poetry are well received, even canonized, by a culture while others are not.

With any luck and some hard work, or some luck and any hard work, we should come out of the course knowing a lot more about poetry as a type of literature, about twentieth-century American poetry, and about reading, analyzing, writing about & enjoying poems.

Please note that you will be asked to write some poems. The purpose here is to learn about poetry "from the inside out," not to try to write great poetry. You do not need to be a poet or to think of yourself as a poet or to have written poetry to complete these assignments successfully. I am aware that this is not a creative-writing class.

Again, welcome; and get ready to immerse yourself in poetry, "diving," to borrow from Adrienne Rich, "into the wreck."

Here are some guidelines to which all of us should try to adhere. I trust none of them will be surprising or difficult. Indeed, I hope they will seem familiar, 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.
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 often have that effect.
3. Please try to do your best, in class-discussions, reading and analysis of poetry, presentations, writing practice-poems, writing papers, and so on. I will try to do my best. The more each of us contributes to the course, the more each of us will get out of it.
4. Please try to turn in work and complete reading-assignments on time. But also please ask me to clarify assignments and guidelines if they are unclear.
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.

Alfred Corn. The Poem’s Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody. Ashland, Oregon: Story Line Press, 2001. First published in 1997.

Rita Dove. On the Bus With Rosa Parks. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

T.S. Eliot. The Waste Land and Other Poems. Edited by Frank Kermode. New York: Penguin, 1998. The Waste Land was first published in 1922.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A Coney Island of the Mind. New York: W.W. Norton, 1974. First published in 1958.

Annie Finch, editor. A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women. Ashland, Oregon: Story Line Press, 1994.

Paul Hoover, editor. Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.

Gary Soto. Junior College. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997.

Participation (attendance, contribution to discussions, etc., helping to create a productive atmosphere, practice poems, in-class writing, and so on): 25 per cent.

Two critical essays: 50 per cent (total).

Two tests: 20 per cent (total).

Formal presentation on one poem: 5 per cent.

We’ll be pursuing several topics, questions, and issues in the course. Among them: Why do you like the poems you like and dislike the ones you dislike? Why, as a reader, might you think of yourself as either "a poetry person" or "a fiction person"? How and why do your preferences in such matters change—if they do; or not--if they don’t? How does the act of reading change what’s being read? How many good ways are there to read a poem? Why read poetry?

How do poets and how does poetry manage language, creating patterns on the page that translate into imagery our minds see and sounds our ears hear? The poems and poets themselves will help us answer this broad question; so will Alfred Corn’s book on "prosody," which is the study of "versification," which is the making of the patterns mentioned above. Finch’s anthology will help us with this question, too, because it collects contemporary "formal" (as opposed to "free-verse") poetry.

Another question, with apologies to Tina Turner: What’s T. S. Eliot got to do with it? --Meaning, why is Eliot’s poetry considered to be so important, to be something with which to contend? How did his poems alter the landscape of modern poetry? What exactly do we mean when we say (if we say) that his poetry is "difficult"? How does reading his poetry prepare us to read poetry from the rest of the century? What is a Modern (capital M) poem? We’ll look at The Waste Land, that famous poem, but also at many shorter poems.

Who is this "Beatnik," Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and after reading his poetry, what can we say about what happened to lyric poetry after mid-century? Why is A Coney Island of the Mind in its 21^st printing?

To what extent, if any, do circumstances of a poet’s era, social-class, ethnic background, gender, sexual identity, and/or regional background affect form, language, and genre? Sometimes this big question will implicitly guide our reading of Eliot, Ferlinghetti, Dove, Soto, and poets in the anthologies. Often other questions will guide our reading.

Forget Eliot (if only we could, you may be thinking): what about poetry now? What does lyric poetry of the 1990s and beyond look like? What is it up to? What do we mean by "postmodern poetry"?

The following schedule tries its best to establish a reasonably organized way to proceed with reading the poems, studying the topics, trying to answer complex questions, and, ultimately, arriving at a better understanding of this genre, poetry. Nonetheless, we may sometimes sense that we’re doing many things at once, including things we haven’t even mentioned yet, like papers and presentations. If we need to adjust the schedule, we will. Otherwise, here we go.

Tuesday, January 21. Overview of the course and consideration of the syllabus. Defining "poetry" and "lyric poetry." Your attitudes toward poetry in general. Discussing "genre," genre-conventions, the status of genres, etc. Reading and analyzing one poem by A.E. Houseman. Writing a line of iambic pentameter.

Thursday, January 23. Line and Stress in Lyric Poetry. For today, read The Poem’s Heartbeat, ix-24. Also read Eliot, "Introduction" (by Kermode), "Brief Chronology," and the poems on pages 1-28. Take notes on the poems. Write questions and observations about them. Dig into the poems.

Tuesday, January 28. Accent and Syllable in Lyric Poetry. For today, read The Poem’s Heartbeat, 25-37 and look at the sample scansions on 151-161. In Finch’s anthology, read poems and brief commentary by Debra Bruce, Julia Budenz, Marilyn Hacker, and Maxine Kumin. Applying essentials of prosody—line, stress, accent, syllable--to specific poems. A "sound poem" assigned.

Thursday, January 30. For today, write a poem that contains both a regular metric scheme and a regular rhyme scheme. The poem should not, indeed must not, make sense. Also read The Poem’s Heartbeat, 38-64. In Finch’s anthology, read poems and brief commentary by Mary Jo Salter, Maureen Seaton, and Elizabeth Alexander. What questions should we ask of the poems we will read for February 4?

Tuesday, February 4. A visit to free verse. In Hoover’s anthology, read the poems by Levertov, Creeley, and Snyder.

Thursday, February 6. Rhyme and Stanza in Lyric Poetry. For today, read The Poem’s Heartbeat, 65-88. In Finch’s anthology, read poems and brief commentary by Janet Lewis, Phyllis Levin, Nellie Wong, and Nell Altizer.

Tuesday, February 11. Modernism and Poetry. For today, read The Waste Land. Extrapolate, with specifics: assuming it is a Modernist poem, then what characterizes Modernist poetry? Assess, with specifics: assuming it is a "difficult" poem, what makes it so? Surprise, with specifics: assuming it is an accessible poem, what makes it so? Describe, with specifics: What is the form, what are the forms, of The Waste Land? What does it do to our notions of poetry as a genre (with sub-genres)? Chart our course, with specifics: assuming we will spend a second day on the poem, what shall we (what do you want to) discuss?

Thursday, February 13. Our second day on The Waste Land.

Tuesday, February 18. What Is Postmodernism? Bring in definitions and examples from your previous studies, courses, and reading—film, popular culture, philosophy, criticism, whatever. Also, for today read the "Introduction" to Hoover’s anthology and summarize the definitions it includes. A postmodern (perhaps) reading assignment: rummage around the first 203 pages of Hoover’s anthology until you locate at least one poem that appeals to you. Be ready to discuss this poem/these poems and to say why they are a) postmodern and b) appealing or "good." First essay assigned, discussed, bemoaned, celebrated.

Thursday, February 20. For today, in Hoover’s anthology, read the poems by Amiri Baraka, Anne Waldman, Russell Edson, and John Giorno. Also read The Poem’s Heartbeat, 123-142. Obviously, these poets are not formalists in the sense most of Alfred Corn’s book approaches and defines traditional "formal" poetry. Granting that, move on to determine how these poets still create patterns, use rhythm, and work with how words sound.

Tuesday, February 25. Taking a break from postmodernist poetry. Looking at traditional verse forms. For today, read The Poem’s Heartbeat, 89-108, write a serious limerick, and, in Finch’s anthology, read poems by Noguere (p. 168), Dove (p. 59), Cherry (pp. 40-41), and Peacock (p. 185). Also read Nancy Willard’s limerick (p. 260), sestinas by Honor Moore (p. 163-164), the villanelle by Kizer (p. 132), and the villanelle by Grosholz (p. 85). On your own, look at Finch’s Appendix 2, 282-292, choose one of the forms listed that interests you, read one poem that exemplifies that form, and be able to discuss it in class. (Remember: you should be working on your essay.)

Thursday, February 27. For today, read part one (through page 46) of A Coney Island of the Mind. Take notes. Have much to say and questions to ask.

Tuesday, March 4. Rough draft of essay due at the beginning of class. Review for test.

Thursday, March 6. For today, read the rest of A Coney Island of the Mind. In Hoover’s anthology, read poems by Ginsberg, 130-136. Develop a comparison between Eliot’s poetry and Ferlinghetti’s (& Ginsberg’s).

Tuesday, March 11. Test.

Thursday, March 13. Essay due.

March 17-21. Spring Break.

Tuesday, March 25. For today, read On the Bus With Rosa Parks, through page 38.

Thursday, March 27. For today, read On the Bus With Rosa Parks, page 39 through page 74. Distribute prose poems by Robert Bly. About the presentations.

Tuesday, April 1. For today, in Hoover’s anthology, read the "Poetics" pieces, which begin on page 613, by the following writers: Charles Olsen, John Cage, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, Clark Coolidge, Lyn Hejinian, Victor Cruz, and Charles Bernstein. Identify points of contrast and comparison.

Thursday, April 3. Into the belly of the posmodernist beast! "Language Poetry." In Hoover’s anthology, read the poems by Olsen, Bernstein, Scalapino, and Hejinian. Don’t give up. Dig into them.

Tuesday, April 8. For today, write a "language poem." Prose poems. In Hoover’s anthology, read poems by Cage, 19-26, Godfrey on 473-474, Mandel, 418-420, Clark, 396 ("Suicide with Squirtgun"), and Gerstler, 606-607. Also read photocopied poems by Robert Bly. Surrealism and Dada and a quick loop back to Eliot (bring his book). Music by John Cage.

Thursday, April 10. For today, read Junior College through page 37. Presentations.

Tuesday, April 15. For today, finish reading Junior College. Second essay assigned, discussed. Presentations.

Thursday, April 17. Presentations. Review for test.

Tuesday, April 22. For today, in Hoover’s anthology, read poems by Lehman, Hagedorn, Cruz, and Baca. Also for today, write a short prose poem. Presentations. Remember: you should be working on your essay.

Thursday, April 24. Test.

Tuesday, April 29. Rough draft of second essay due in class.

Thursday, May 1. Catch-up day.

Tuesday, May 6. Essay due in class.