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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

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?

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.

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.

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

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. 

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