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POETRY WORKSHOP Monday 4:30-7:10 ~ Robinson A-245 SUSAN TICHY / SPRING 2003
Office: Robinson A-431 |
| 397 Main |
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: 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. 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 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.” 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 Writing: 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. PC: pp 145-148, including the sonnet by Molly Peacock Poems in new handout Poems in MAP: Couplets: Quatrains: Dickinson: see last week's reading Ballad & Blues Quatrains: Brown: poems starting p. 473: Scotty Has His Say, Slim in
Atlanta, Slim in Hell, Rent Day Blues 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:
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. |