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Schedule, Weeks 4-6
Week 4: Feb 17: Narrative Poems, Introduction
to the Line
Week 5: Feb 24: Accent, Duration,
Meter & Line
Week 6: Mar 3: Meter, Elegy
Abbreviations used:
PC=Poet's Companion, MAP=Oxford Anthology
of Modern American Poetry, PINSKY=The Sound of Poetry
Week 4: Feb 17: Narrative
Poems, Introduction to the Line
Reading:
PC: Music of the Line
Poems in MAP:
Narrative and Narrative Lyric
These categories are not entirely distinct: most narrative
poems rely on lyric affects, and most lyric situations require some degree
of narrative context, even if only the generic "a lover speaks to the beloved."
A narrative poem is generally defined in the most obvious way: a poem that
tells a story. Yet in some narrative poems the story seems to be the whole
point, while in others the story seems merely to set a scene and define
a particular speaker so that lyric epiphany or expression can take place.
As you read these poems consider the questions that follow. Some of the poems
we've read in earlier weeks may also be narrative, so you may want to return
to some of them, as well, with these questions in mind.
- who speaks? is the audience a reader, or do we overhear
words spoken to another character?
- how distinct are characters other than the speaker?
- how much happens? how much is merely 'situation'
without development?
- how large or small are the events of the poem?
- are these events what the poem is about? or do they
serve to frame or tame another subject? (as do, for example, the small acts
of the narrator and companions in Sandburg's "Planked White Fish", Pinksy's
"The Unseen", or Erdrich's "Dear John Wayne")
- at what level of detail is the story told? can we
see it unfold, or are we just given an outline of events?
- does the poem stay with a story in one time and place?
- how specific is the setting, time and place?
- does the speaker offer commentary, or just 'what
happened'?
- at key moments of emotion, transition or conclusion,
are the poem's affects primarily lyrical or primarily narrative?
- how long is the poem?
- does the poem leave you wanting to know more of what
happened? more about the speaker?
- if you had to toss this poem in a box labeled "narrative"
or a box labeled "narrative lyric" where would you toss it?
Frost: Home Burial 85, Witch of Coos 97: read one of these
Sandburg: Planked Whitefish 110
Millay: Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree 320: a narrative
sonnet series, optional
Reznikoff: from Testimony: Negroes 355, from Holocaust:
Massacres 364: documentary poems, optional
Bishop: In the Waiting Room 639
O'Hara: The Day Lady Died 829
Levine: Belle Isle, 1949 927, Fear and Fame 931
Pinsky: The Unseen 1059
Hass: A Story about the Body 1076
Olds: The Waiting 1080
Louis: Wakinyan 1127, How Verdell and Dr. Zhivago
Disassembled the Soviet Union 1129
Komunyakaa: Tu Do Street 1142, Prisoners 1143, Work
1148
C.D. Wright: Obedience of the Corpse 1158
Young Bear: It Is the Fish-faced Boy Who Struggles
1165
Forche: The Colonel 1168
Erdrich: Dear John Wayne 1190
Espada: Federico's Ghost 1212, Saint Vincent de Paul
Food Pantry Stomp 1213, Fidel in Ohio 1213
Alexie: Tourists 1222
Poems in which line reinforces or augments the
sentence:
Sandburg: The Muckers 108, Child of the Romans 109
Moore: A Grave 254
Brown: Southern Cop 484
Roethke: Meditation at Oyster River 591 or Journey
to the Interior 593
Bishop: the poem above + The Fish 631, At the Fishhouses
634
Creeley: The Flower 876
Bly: Looking at Snow 881, Counting Small-boned Bodies
882
J. Wright: Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry Ohio, Lying
in a Hammock, A Blessing, all on 891
Poems in which the line and sentence are angled
against each other:
Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow 170, This is Just to
Say 191, Proletarian Portrait 192, The Descent 193
Moore: The Fish 252,
cummings: In just spring 344, Buffalo Bill 346, My
sweet old etcetera 348
Niedecker: Paean to Place 537
Levertov: The Ache of Marriage 807
Ammons: Corson's Inlet 884, Coon Song 888
Poems related to Counterpoint assignment, Version
One:
Levine: 2 poems above + Francisco I'll Bring You
Red Carnations 928
Williams: Queen Anne's Lace 166, Portrait of a Lady
165
Komunyakaa: all three poems listed above
Gluck: Parable of the Hostages 1085, Parable of the
King 1084
Harper: Deathwatch 1047
Tichy: At a
PC Sergeant's House
Handed out in class: The Portrait, Black Silk
Poems related to Counterpoint assignment, Version
Two:
Oliver: Lillies Break Open 1023, Black Snake this
Time 1024
Doty: Homo Will Not Inherit 1183
Creeley: I Know a Man 876, For Love 877
Gluck: Circe's Power 1085
Writing:
Please do the exercises in this order, before you
write your two poems:
Notebook exercise: CP p. 113 #2
Notebook exercise: What's in a line?
Notebook exercise: Testing the line
A poem in Counterpointed Lines (version
1 or version 2)
A narrative poem, with special concentration on the
way you make & use your lines
E-mail:
Poets in Group 2, send a poem from this week or
an earlier week to class list by noon Sunday.
Poets in Groups 1 & 3, send one of your poems
from this week to your small group.
Bring to class:
Poets in Group 4, bring a copy of a poem from
this week or an earlier week to hand in to me.
All: Print the poems you receive from classmates,
read them & make notes for discussion. Also bring your versions of the
poems in What's in a line?
In Class we'll discuss narrative in a few
poems from the reading and the lined versions of poems you created from the
exercise,, then workshop poems from Group 2.
Week 5: Feb 24: Accent,
Duration, Meter & Line
Portfolio #1 due at start of class Guidelines
Reading:
PC Meter Rhyme & Form through
pg. 145
PINSKY Accent & Duration
Poems in MAP:
Back to Revised Schedule Week 8
Keep reading poems on last
week's lists concerning the line, and start on this list, which we'll also
use next week and beyond:
3-Beat lines, both trimeter
and accentual:
Frost: Neither Out Far Nor
In Deep 104
Jackson: The Wind Suffers 487
Stevens: 13 Ways of Looking
at a Blackbird
Bishop: At the Filling Station
636, In the Waiting Room, The Armadillo 638
Roethke: My Papa's Waltz (on
handout)
4-Beat lines, both tetrameter
and accentual:
Frost: Stopping by Woods 100
Stevens: Anecdote of the Jar
130
Knight: For Malcolm, Ten Years
After 971
Iambic lines of varying
lengths:
Frost: Fire and Ice 95
Pound: The River Merchant's
Wife 205
Pentameter lines:
A. Lowell: The Sisters 48
Frost: Mending Wall 84, An Old
Man's Winter Night 92, Design 96
Stevens: Sunday Morning
McKay: The Harlem Dancer 315,
If We Must Die 315, Mulatto 318
Millay: I Being Born a Woman
and Distressed 320, Love Is Not All 327 or other sonnets
Jarrell: A Front 714, Losses
714, Second Air Force 715
Stafford: Traveling Through
the Dark 729
McGrath: Ode for the American
Dead in Asia 749
Brooks: The white troops had
their orders 770, Piano after war 769
Hecht: A Hill 815, More Light!
816
Pinsky: The Shirt
Writing:
Notebook exercise: PC
p.114 #8,following instructions given in #7
A poem generated from PC p.
113 #3 or #4
Notebook exercise: Measuring the Line, steps
a) and b)
Notebok exercise: A Poem in Four Steps and/or Put Some Life in It!
(do one or
the other, or both, depending on your experience writing iambic pentamter)
Notebook exercise: Wind it Up or Wind it Down
A poem in iambic pentameter,
generated from one of the exercises.
E-Mail:
Poets in Group 3, send one
of your poems from this week or an earlier week to class list by noon
Sunday.
Poets in Groups 2 & 4, send
one of your poems from this week to your small group.
Bring to class:
Poets in Group 1, bring a poem
from this week or an earlier week to hand in to me.
All: Print the poems you receive
from classmates, read them & make notes for discussion.
In Class we'll discuss
the sound of the line in terms of accent & duration, begin discussion
of meter, then workshop poems from Group 3.
Week 6:
March 3: Meter, Elegy
Reading:
Notes on scansion
PINSKY Technical Terms & Vocal Realities
PC: Death & Grief
Poems in MAP:
Keep reading/rereading poems from the last two weeks.
Having read this chapter from Pinsky, pay special attention to the differences
between poems of different line lengths.
Syllabic poems:
Moore: Poetry 250, An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle
in the Shape of a Fish 252, The Fish 252, Sojourn in the Whale 253, Bird-witted
272, The Paper Nautilus 23, The Pangolin 269
From handout: poems by Plath, Auden, Gunn, Thomas
Elegies & related poems:
Whitman: Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
3
Dickinson: beginning on p. 9, #258, #280, #465, #712
Williams: Widow's Lament in Springtime 166
Jeffers: Hurt Hawks 245
Moore: No Swan So Fine 269
Ransom: Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter 312
Millay: Say That We Saw Spain Die 329
Tate: Ode to the Confederat eDead 409
Roethke: The Flight 587
Oppen: In Alsace 605
Rolfe: Asbestos 609, Elegia 611
Bishop: One Art 647
Hayden: from Elegies for Paradise Valley 703
Jarrell: Death of the Ball Turret Gunner 713
Lowell: For the Union Dead 759
Brooks: We Real Cool 772, A Boy Died in My Alley 777
Levertov: Olga Poems 808
Bly: Dead Seal Ner McClure's Beach 882
Levine: Francisco, I'll Bring You Red Carnations 828
Knight: For Malcolm, A Year After: 970
Plath: Daddy 984
Clifton: at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation
1030
Harper: We assume 1046, Reuben Reuben 1046, Deathwatch
1047
Hongo: Ancestral Graves 1169,
Baca: Mi Tio Baca El Poeta De Socorro 1175
Espada: Federico's Ghost 1212
Poems by Norman MacCaig in the handout
Read quickly through as many of these poems as
possible, then go back & read about ten of them more closely. You may
concentrate on elegies for individuals or on other kinds of poems.
Writing:
Notebook exercise: Scan three of the following poems
from your reading. At least one must be from each list. As you scan
each poem, locate one or two places where meter or rhythm are especially active
and meaningful for the poem's tone or curve of thought. Write 2-3 sentences
about those key points in each poem.
Shakespeare: When to the sessions of sweet
silent thought
Milton: When I consider how my light is spent
Burns: two stanzas of To a Mouse
Keats: When I have fears that I may cease to be
Browning: 20 lines of My Last Duchess or 20 lines
of Andrea del Sarto
Dickinson: After Great Pain, or I Heard a Fly Buzz
When I Died
Frost: Stopping by Woods
Hughes: Backlash Blues
McKay: The Harlem Dancer
Millay: any sonnet
Knight: For Malcolm, One Year After
Stevens: Anecdote of the Jar
Bishop: 20 lines of The Fish
Levertov: The Ache of Marriage
MacCaig: Aunt Julia
Niedecker: 20 lines of Paean to Place
Ginsberg: 20 lines of Howl
J. Wright: Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, Ohio
An elegy or other poem about death, from PC p. 44-45 or
modeled on elegies in your reading. Prepare two copies of the poem, one in
normal format, one typed double or triple space and scanned. The poem may
be in meter, loose iambics, accentual verse or free verse.
A poem in normative (using models in handout) or
quantitative syllabics.
If you don't want to follow the quantitative syllabics exercise I've provided,
devise your own scheme modeled on a poem by Moore, Thomas, or Auden.
E-Mail:
Poets in Group 4, send one of your poems from
this week or an earlier week to class list by noon Sunday.
Poets in Groups 1 & 3, send one of your poems
from this week to your small group.
Bring to class
Poets in Group 2, bring a poem from this week
or an earlier week to hand in to me.
All: Print the poems you receive from classmates,
read them & make notes for discussion
In Class we'll practice scansion & metrical
analysis, workshop poems from Group 4.
NEXT WEEK IS SPRING BREAK: NO CLASS
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