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Jan. 9

-Course Introduction
-Overview of Modern American Poetry (Lecture)

-Start Whitman: “One’s Self I Sing” (pp. 3-4) and Dickinson “I dwell in Possibility” (p. 38) and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” (p. 38), “Tell All the Truth But Tell It Slant” (p. 40-41)

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Jan. 16

Martin Luther King holiday. No classes.

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Jan. 23

-Foundations of Modern American Poetry: Whitman and Dickinson
Whitman: “from Song of Myself” (4-17), “Crossing Brooking Ferry” (pp. 18-22) “I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing” (22), “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (pp. 23-29), and “Preface to Leaves of Grass 1855” (pp. 865-870)
-Dickinson: “I Never Lost as Much but Twice” (p. 32), “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed” (p. 33), “Wild Nights—Wild Nights!” (p. 33), “There’s a Certain Slant of Light” (p. 34),  “The Soul Selects Her Own Society” (p. 35), “ A Bird Came Down the Walk” (p. 35),  “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes” (p. 36), “Much Madness Is Divinest Sense“ (p. 36),  “The Brain—Is Wider than the Sky” (p. 38), “My Life had Stood—A Loaded Gun” (p. 39), “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” (40), “ “My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close” (p. 43), and Letters—261, 265, and 268 (pp. 870-873)  
-Graduate students submit top 3 choices for leading discussion and additional poetry project by Wednesday, January 25

-Paper One Assigned

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Jan. 30

-American Voices/American Places: Masters, Robinson, Sandburg, Frost
Masters: Masters: Spoon River Anthology: “The Hill,” “Amanda Barker,” “Fiddler Joes,” “Petit, the Poet,” “Elsa Wertman,” “Hamilton Greene,” “Anne Rutledge” (pp. 158-161)

-Robinson: “Richard Cory” (pp. 163-164), “Miniver Cheevy” *p. 166), “Mr. Flood’s Party” (pp. 169-170)

-Sandburg: “Chicago” (pp. 227)

-Frost: “Mending Wall” (pp. 203-204), “Home Burial” (pp. 204-207),  “After Apple-Picking,” “Birches” (pp. 211-212), “`Out, Out—“ (pp. 213-214),  “Fire and Ice” (p. 214),  “For Once, Then, Something” (p. 215), “Acquainted with the Night” (pp. 217-218), “Desert Places” (p. 220), and “Design” (p. 221) and from Poetics—“The Figure a Poem Makes” (pp. 984-986)  
Short Paper 1 Due for Graduates and Undergraduates
Graduate Students will have their poets/discussion dates assigned by this date

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Feb. 6

-Imagism
-Pound: “A Pact” (p. 350-351) and “In a Station of the Metro” (p. 351) and from “Poetics”-- “A Retrospect” (pp. 929-938) and “from How to Read” (pp. 939-941)

-Stein: “from Tender Buttons” (pp. 180-185) and “Idem the Same A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson” (pp. 194-196)  and from “Poetics” “From a Transatlantic Interview” (pp. 986-993)
-H.D. “Sea Rose” (p. 395), “from The Walls Do Not Fall” (pp. 401-405), and “Tribute to the Angels” (pp. 405-414)
-Amy Lowell: “Venus Transiens” (p. 199), “Shore Grass” (p. 300), and from “Poetics” “Preface to Some Imagist Poems” (pp. 926-927)

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Feb. 13

-Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (pp. 463-466) and The Waste Land  (pp. 472-487) and from “Poetics” “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (pp. 941-947), from Hamlet (pp. 947-949) and “The Metaphysical Poets” (pp. 949-953)

-Short Paper 2 Due for Graduates and Undergraduates

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Feb. 20

-Williams: “Spring and All” (pp. 291-292),  “The Red Wheelbarrow” (pp. 294-295), and “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” (310), and from Poetics “ from Prologue to Kora in Hell” (pp. 954-959)

-Stevens: “Sunday Morning” (p. 237-240), “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” (p. 242),  “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (pp. 244-246),  “Anecdote of the Jar” (p. 246),  “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” (p. 248),  “The Idea of Order at Key West” (pp. 249-250), and from “Poetics” “Aphorisms” (pp. 971-976), and “from The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words” (pp. 976-983)

-Moore:  “The Fish” (pp. 436-437), “Poetry” (pp. 438-439), “A Grave” (pp. 440) and from Poetics “Humility, Concentration, and Gusto” (pp. 994-1000)  

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Feb. 27

-MIDTERM
 -Jeffers: “Shine, Perishing Republic” (pp. 415-416), “Hurt Hawks” (pp. 416-417), “Rock and Hawk” (pp. 417-418)

-cummings: “in Just-” (pp. 546-547),  “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls” (p. 548), “i was sitting in mcsorley’s” (p. 549). “next to of course god America I, (p. 550), ” “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (pp. 533-534), “my father moved through dooms of love” (pp. 554-556), “pity this busy monster, manunkind” (p. 556)

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March 5

-Harlem Renaissance
-Hughes:  “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (pp. 687-688), “The Weary Blues” (pp. 688-689),  “Sylvester’s Dying Bed” (pp. 693-694), “The Bitter river” (pp. 694-696), “Theme for English B” (pp. 702-703), “Harlem” (p. 704) and from “Poetics” “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (pp. 964-967)

-Cullen: “Yet Do I Marvel” (p. 727)

-McKay:  “America” (p. 503), “The Lynching” (p. 502), “Outcast” (p. 503-504), “The Harlem Dancer” (pp. 501), “The White City” (p. 503)

Toomer: “Georgia Dusk” (p. 561) 

Tolson: “from Harlem Gallery” (pp. 592-604)

Brown:  “Strong Men” (pp. 675-677) and “Memphis Blues” (pp. 677-678)

-Short Paper 3 Due for Undergraduates
-Paper Due on Additional Poet for Graduate Students

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March 12

Spring Break

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March 19

-Fugitives

-Ransom: “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” (p. 456) and “Painted Head” (p. 459)  

-Warren: “Evening Hawk” (p. 756) and “Fear and Trembling” (p. 757)

-Tate: “Ode to the Confederate Dead” (p. 650-652)

-Roethke: “My Papa’s Waltz” (p. 841) and “Dolor” (p. 844) and “The Waking” (p. 849-850)

Volume 2  

-Bishop: The Fish” (pp. 21-22) “The Monument” (pp. 19-21),“At the Fishhouses” (pp. 26-28), “The Armadillo” (pp. 31-32), “Poem” (pp. 40-41), “One Art” (p. 43)
-Paper Prospectus Due for Graduates and Undergraduates

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March 26

-Black Mountain Poets

-Olson: “Pacific Lament” (p. 3), “The Thing Was Moving” (pp. 4-5), “from The Maximum Poems” (pp. 6-15) and from Poetics “Projective Verse” (pp. 1053-1061)

-Creeley: “The Door” (pp. 327-329) “From Life and Death” (pp. 333-334)
-Duncan: “Poetry, a Natural Thing” (pp. 152), “Passage Over Water” (p. 153), “A Little Language” (pp. 157-158)

-Levertov: “Pleasures” (pp. 248-249), “The Dog of Art” (p. 249), “Song for Ishtar” (pp. 249-250) and from “Poetics” “Some Notes on Organic Form (1965)” (pp. 1081-1086)

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April 2

-Beats

-Ferlinghetti-“In Goya’s Greatest Scenes We Seem to See” (pp. 163-164)

-Ginsberg; “Howl” (pp. 337—344) and “A Supermarket in California” (pp. 344-345), and “America” (pp. 347-349), and from Poetics—“Notes Written on Finally Recording Howl” (pp. 1074-1077)

-Snyder: ”Milton by Firelight” (pp. 536)

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April 9

-Confessional Poets
-Lowell :  “The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket” (pp. 121-125), “Skunk Hour,” (pp. 132-134), “Waking Early Sunday Morning” (pp. 136-138),“Reading Myself” (pp. 138-139) “

-Sexton : “Her Kind” (pp. 432-433), “The Truth the Dead Know” (pp. 433)

-Plath: “The Disquieting Muses” (595-597), “Metaphors” (p. 597), “Daddy” (pp. 606-608), “Ariel” (pp. 611-612), “Lady Lazarus” (pp. 612-614)

-Rich: “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” (p. 459), “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” (pp. 459-463), “Planetarium” (pp. 465-466), “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” (pp. 466-467), “Diving into the Wreck” (pp. 467-469) and from “Poetics” “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” (pp. 1086-1096)

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April 16

African American Poets

Brooks: “We Real Cool” (p. 145)

Baraka—“An Agony. As Now” (p. 634-635), “A Poem for Black Hearts” (pp. 635-636), “Legacy” (p. 636), and “A New Reality Is Better Than a New Movie!” (pp. 636-637) (pp. 1077-1081)

Lorde-“Coal” (p. 616) “From the House of Yemanja,” (pp. 618-619)

Clifton-“[still]” (pp. 659-660), “cutting greens” (p. 660), “homage to my hips” (p 660), “ I am accused of tending to the past” (p. 661), “at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south Carolina, 1989” (pp. 661-662)

Dove-“Geometry” (p. 976), “from Thomas and Beulah” (pp. 981-987)  
Final Papers Due for Undergraduates and Graduates

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April 23

Native American and Asian American  Poets

Alexie:  “Evolution” (p. 1046), “On the Amtrack from Boston to New York city” (pp. 1046-1047), “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” (pp. 1049-1050), “Crow Testament” (pp. 1050-1052)  

Silko-“Long Time Ago” (pp. 880-884)

Harjo-“Deer Dancer” (pp. 948-949)

Erdrich-“Captivity” (pp. 1006-1008)

Marilyn Chin-“How I Got That Name” (pp. 1013-1016)
Cathy Song—“Beauty and Sadness” (1020-1022)

Li-Young Lee-“ Persimmons” (pp. 1041-1043)

Course Evaluations

4/30

FINAL EXAM: 6:30 p.m. Mon., 4/30