ENGLISH
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POETRY WORKSHOP
Monday 4:30-7:10 ~ Robinson A-245

SUSAN TICHY / SPRING 2003

Office: Robinson A-431
703-993-1191 / stichy@gmu.edu
 Monday &Thursday 3:00-4:00 & by appointment


397 Main

Weeks 1-3

Weeks 4-6

Weeks 7-9

Weeks 10-12

Weeks 13-15

Assignment 
Guidelines

MAP Website

Other Poetry 
Web Sites

Susan Tichy's
Main Page
 


Revised Schedule, weeks 10-12

Week 10: March 31: Imitation, The Ordinary

Week 11: April 7: Rhyme & Sound, Poetry of Place 

Week 12: April 14: Building Blocks: Quatrain, Couplet, Sonnet

Abbreviations used:
PC=Poet's Companion, MAP=Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry,
PINSKY=The Sound of Poetry, ICW=in class writing



Week 10: March 31: Imitation / Writing about the Ordinary

In class we will continue our discussion from last week, focusing more specifically on how to analyze a poem in order to imitate it or to learn from it certain aspects of craft. We'll follow that with more workshop in small groups.

Your reading very light this week so you can be working on your Personal Anthology, which is due next week. If you have questions about this assignment, please e-mail me this week. The only questions I will answer at the last minute are legitimate last-minute questions, such as format details or permission to exceed the length limit.
Guidelines

Reading:

Poems handed out in class: "The Ordinary"

Writing:

Choose a poem from last week's reading & discusion whose basic plan of attack appeals to you. Write a poem that imitates that plan of attack. Write for me a few notes about what you were trying to imitate.

Work on your poem Getting Outside Yourself.
Remember that you will need to turn in your research notes along with the poem.

E-Mail: Send a poem to your small group & to me by noon Sunday.

Bring to class: Print the poems you receive from classmates, read them & make notes for discussion.


Week 11: April 7: Rhyme & Sound, Poetry of Place

In class this week we will play sound games, chant vowel scales, and discuss the varieties of sound resemblance as well as the semantic uses of rhyme. We'll also talk briefly about poetry of place & the tradition of pastoral poetry, before going to small groups.

Personal Anthology due at the start of class

Reading:

PINSKY Like & Unlike Sounds
PC: Poetry of Place

Poems from MAP:

Identify in these poems the variety and degree of sound resemblance and difference, and the affects on meaning and tone. Locate rhymes that fall on unaccented syllables or secondary-accent syllables, like a rhyme between “density” and “me.”

Think, too, about the meaning of rhyme words. Are they important words? Small “function words” like “and” or “of”? Do rhymed pairs complement each other’s meaning or create contrast (white/bright vs white/blight)? Do you find pairs of Latinate/Germanic words, as highlighted by Pinsky?

List One: poems including end-rhyme:

Dickinson #465 p.11, #258 p.9, #712 p.15: slant and true rhymes

Niedecker "Paean to Place" p.536: rhyme in free verse, variety of sound resemblances & pattern variations

Millay "I being born" p.320: rhyme & wit, slant rhyme at end
Milay Love is not blind p.321: and Italian sonnet: compare rhymes in first 8 lines vs. last 6, & link to meaning
Millay: Oh oh you will be sorry 321: an English sonnet: find the patterns & link to meaning

Moore “The Fish” 252: parts of speech, nearness & distance, accented and un-
Moore: “An Egyptian Pulled-Glass Fish” 252: full & slant rhymes, meanings, tone
Moore: Sojourn in the Whale 253: length of line & distance between rhymes, rhymes on penultimate words

Cullen: Incident 530, Yet Do I Marvel 531: Rhyme, wit & satire, look at meanings of rhyming pairs in “Marvel”

Jarrell: Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner 713: epigrammatic rhyme at end
Jarrell: A Front 714: slant rhymes w/ full-rhyme closure, look at meanings, mood, rhyme in narrative

Plath: Daddy 984: monorhyme, obsessive tone, high and low vowels
Plath: Lady Lazarus 988: placement and degree of rhyme, full rhyme at end
Plath: Ariel 987: how is use of rhyme same & different from “Lady Lazarus”?

List Two: poems in which sound is especially prominent, but end-ryhme is mostly or completely  absent:

Levertov: The Ache of Marriage: high and low vowels, use of “it” & related sounds, then density at the end

Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow p.170: what are the sound patterns? what word stands out?

Williams: Portrait of a Lady p.65: relation of sound to the disjointed speech & description, relation of this poem to techniques of modern art

Harper: Brother John p.1044: rhythm, repetition, range of sound resemblance, relation of this poem to jazz

Grahn: Plainsong p.1071, Carol p.1070: rhythm, repetition, range of sound resemblance, relation of this poem to plainsong chant

Mullen: from Trimmings 1187: range of sound resemblance + puns, relation of this poem to advertising

Writing:

Finish your poem Getting Outside Yourself.

Remember that you will need to turn in your research notes along with the poem.

E-Mail: Send a poem from this week to your small group & to me by noon Sunday.

Bring to class:  Your anthology, your poem Getting Outside Yourself,  &, as usual, print the poems you receive from classmates, read them & make notes for discussion. 


Week 12: April 14: Building Blocks: Quatrain, Couplet, Sonnet

In class we will talk in general about stichic vs. stanzaic poems, and more specifically about open and closed couplets, quatrains, and sonnets (which are built of those blocks). We'll then move to small groups.

Reading: 

PC: pp 145-148, including the sonnet by Molly Peacock

Poems in new handout

Poems in MAP:

Couplets:

Spencer: Lady, Lady 163 (alternates rhymed w/ unrhymed couplets)
Toomer: Reapers 352, November Cotton Flower (a couplet sonnet) 353
Lowell: To Speak of Woe that Is in Marriage (a couplet sonnet) 755
Brooks: A song in the front yard (irregular form) 766

Quatrains:

Dickinson: see last week's reading
Robinson: Richard Cory 26, Minver Cheevy 27

Frost: Desert Places 102, Neither Out Far Nor In Deep 104,

Bogan: The Crows 379, Women 380
Rich: Aunt Jennifer's Tigers 934 (couplet quatrain)

Ballad & Blues Quatrains:

Brown: poems starting p. 473: Scotty Has His Say, Slim in Atlanta, Slim in Hell, Rent Day Blues
Cullen: Incident 530
Randall: Ballad of Birmingham 731

Brooks: of DeWitt Williams 767

Sonnets:

Frost: Design 96

In the early 20th c. the sonnet was revived and remade for new uses by two American poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay & Claude McKay. Millay retained the themes of love both true and false, spiritual and sexual, but infused them with a woman's wit and a woman's anger. McKay used the historical authority of this form to claim the status of a fully speaking subject in the literary tradition, addressing within its sharp confines a broad range of issues on race and power. To us, today, his diction may appear abstract or even cliched, but it is important to remember the absolute novelty and courage of these poems when they appeared. His work laid the groundwork for the special power and purpose of the sonnet in African American poetry of the century. This is the only sonnet tradition to which our editor, Cary Nelson, is attracted, so in MAP you'll find more sonnets by Black poets than White ones.

McKay: his poems, many of them sonnets, begin on 314; please read The Harlem Dancer, If We Must Die, Outcast, & Mulatto

Millay: a selection of her sonnets begins on 320; please read: I Being Born a Woman and Distressed 320, Oh Oh you will be sorry 321, Love is not all 327

Cummings: next to of course god america 348

Cullen: Yet Do I Marvel 531

Brooks: Gay Chaps at the Bar 768: from this sequence please read "Piano After War" and "The White Troops Had Their Orders"

Knight: For Malcolm (tetrameter) 971

Writing:

Notebook exercise: write all of the following:

  • two closed couplets
  • two open couplets
  • two ballad quatrains
  • two alternating quatrains 
  • two envelope quatrains or two quatrains with interlocking rhyme (as in "Stopping by Woods")
Your lines must be measured in some way: accentual, syllabic, iambic pentameter, iambic tetrameter, iambic trimeter, etc. Yes, you can reuse the same material in multiple forms. 

Next, choose one of these forms and develop your exercise into a poem. If choosing couplets, extend your poem to at least ten lines. If  using quatrains, extend your poem to at least three stanzas. I don't encourage you to attempt a sonnet until we have talked about them in class.

E-Mail: Send a poem from this week to your small group & to me.

Bring to class: Print the poems you receive from classmates, read them & make notes for discussion.


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