FREE VERSE & ITS KINFOLK, WEEKS 8-10

WHAT WE’LL COVER
In Chapter 4, Beyers takes H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) as an exemplary Imagist and Modernist, and traces the evolution of her early style from translation practices in the 18th and 19th centuries. Along the way he examines the nearly-free-verse of Milton's Samson Agonistes, a little-known 19th century Scottish book that included free verse depictions of hospital life, and much in between. Throughout, he continues to draw connections between issues of form and grammar and issues of subject and speaker. In Chapter 5, he moves on to William Carlos Williams' wide-ranging and consistent explorations of short-line poetics. Beyond Beyers, we will take a look at various short-line poets of the 20th century, as well as syllabic stanzas (particularly those of Marianne Moore) which raise related questions of line, grammar, and speaker despite an apparently antithetical formal strategy.

READING: BOOKS & PHOTOCOPIES:

Beyers: Chapters 4-5
EF: Syllabics, Fractal Amplifications
A short reading on appositive grammar, handed out in class

READING: POETICS:

Lowell: Preface to Some Imagist Poets MODERN 926
Pound: A Retrospect MODERN 928, from How to Read 939
Williams: Prologue to Kora in Hell MODERN 954
Moore: Humility, Concentration, and Gusto MODERN 994

VOCABULARY/PRINCETON:

Twentieth-Century Poetics I: American & British, Imagism, Projective Verse, Objectivism

READING: POEMS:

H.D.: Wine Bowl 1204, Oread MODERN 395, Sea Rose 395, Mid-Day 396, Garden 396, Sea Violet 397, Helen 398, Fragment 68 398,  from The Walls Do Not Fall 401

Williams: Danse Russe MODERN 288, Sympathetic  Portraitof a Child 288, Portrait of a Lady 289, Queen Anne's Lace 290, The Widow's Lament in Springtime 290, The Great Figure 291, Spring and All 291, The Farmer 292, To Elsie 293, The Red Wheelbarrow 294, This Is Just to Say 295, Death 295, Flowers by the Sea 296, The Botticellian Trees 297, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus 310, Haymaking 310, from Asphodel That Greeny Flower 311

Loy: from Songs to Joannes MODERN 269, Brancusi's Golden Bird 273, Der Blinde Junge 274, The Widow's Jazz 282, from Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose 275

Niedecker: Swept Snow Li Po MODERN 717, New-sawed 718, Poet's Work 718, Something in the Water 719, Popcorn-Can Cover 719, My Life by Water 719, Thomas Jefferson 729

Zukofsky: To My Wash-Stand MODERN 738

Oppen: Psalm MODERN 836, from Of Being Numerous 836

Levertov: Pleasures CONTEMP 248, Song for Ishtar 249, The Ache of Marriage 250

Creeley: I Know a Man CONTEMP 330, I Keep to Myself Such Measures 332, Mother's Voice 333, from Life & Death 333

Syllabics:

Moore: Poetry 1218/MODERN 438, The Steeple-Jack 1219, No Swan So Fine 1221, The Fish 1221/MODERN 436, What Are Years? 1224/MODERN 452, Nevertheless 1224, The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing 1225, To a Steam Roller MODERN 433, Critics and Connoisseurs 433, Black Earth 434,  In the Days of Prismatic Color 437, England 439, The Pangolin 448, The Paper Nautilus 451, He Digesteth Harde Yron 453

Rexroth: Proust's Madeleine CONTEMP 769

Auden: In Memory of Sigmund Freud MODERN 803, In Praise of Limstone 806, A Lullaby 815

Thomas: Poem in October CONTEMP 106, Fern Hill 1464/CONTEMP 108, In My Craft or Sullen Art 1465/CONTEMP 110

Gunn: My Sad Captains CONTEMP 485

Plath: Metaphors CONTEMP 597

WHAT WE'LL DO IN CLASS:

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