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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 7-9
Week 7: March 10: SPRING BREAK, NO CLASS Week 8: March 17: Meter & Scansion Week 9: March 24: Back to Basics Abbreviations used: Week 8: March 17: Meter & Scansion (Revised Schedule) Today in class we will talk about meter and practice scanning a few poems. We'll then have a last session of full-class workshop. Next week we'll begin workshop in small groups. Please let me know by e-mail who you would like to be in groups with. If you don't want to name names, you can tell me in more general terms if you would like to be in a group with people writing at about the same level of development, or with a mix of levels. If you haven't yet finished researching for "Getting Outside Yourself", better do it now, because the poem with notes on your research will be due in three weeks. E-mail: If you have not yet had a poem discussed by the class, e-mail a poem for today's workshop by noon Sunday. Reading: you should have read by now: PC Meter Rhyme & Form through pg. 145 PINSKY Accent & Duration AND Technical Terms & Vocal Realities My Notes on scansion Poems in MAP: You should have been reading poems in MAP that were listed for Week 5. Please continue reading from that list of poems. Read several poems with the same line length together--and read them aloud. Here's a link, there and back.Bring to class: Print the poems you receive
from classmates, read them & make notes for discussion. Week 9: March 24: Back to Basics: Imagery, Writing for a Reader, the Situation of the Poem / Getting Outside Yourself We will start class today
with a quiz. If you are late you cannot make it up. After that,
we will examine a few poems for their basic strategies: the relationship(s)
between poet, speaker, subject matter and reader, concrete imagery & how
an experience is created for a reader. We'll use some poems on subjects from
everyday life and some poems related to the assignment "Getting Outside Yourself,"
which will be due in two weeks. This discussion will carry over next week
when we will talk more specificially about how to imitate or learn from a
poem you admire. By this week you should
have selected poems for your Personal Anthology and begun making notes on
how you might want to discuss them. Under our revised plan, you will turn
in only one anthology, so please pay attention to the Guidelines Reading: PINSKY Syntax & Line
Poems in class handout: Go back to the poems I handed
out at the start of the semester & read or reread: Stanley Kunitz: The Portrait For each of these poems,
think about the basic plan of attack. By that I mean, think about how
the poet has created an experience for a reader, and what kind of experience
that is. Is the poem easy to understand? does it reward multiple readings
or use itself up in one or two? On the page with one of the
poems about Native/White contact you'll find some questions for discussion.
Please make some notes in response, and think about the same fundamental issues
for all the poems I've marked (*) on the list above. For the remaining poems
(unmarked) make a few notes about what the poem tells us about the life
situation or experience the poet is writing about, then answer these questions:
How is the situation or life experience conveyed? Are we told directly?
Is it implied? How is it used to structure the poem? What is the place or
the scene in which the poem takes place? How is that place or that scene described
to us? What happens in the poem? How do we know what happens? What has happened
before the narrative time of the poem begins? How do we know? Poems in MAP: Pinsky: The Shirt 1060, Grahn: A Vietnamese Woman
Speaks to an American Soldier 1069, Olds: the photo poems or Things That Are
Worse than Death 1080, Hecht: More Light! More Light! 816, Merwin: The Gardens
of Zuni 917, Levine: The Horse 925, Rich: The Power 953, Corso: Bomb 963,
Taggard: Up State--Depression Summer 336, Fearing: $2.50 495, Hughes: Come
to the Waldorf-Astoria 510 AND 1230, Dinner Guest Me, Beecher: Report to
the Stockholders 557, Hayden: Runagate Runagate 696, Letter from Phyllis
Wheatley 699, Smith: Malcolm, first section 1062, Dove: Parsley 1172, Erdrich:
Indian Boarding School 1189, Moss: Crystals 1196, Foster: Life Magazine December
1941 1208, Espada: Federico's Ghost 1212, Skull Beneath the Skin of the Mango
1214, St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry Stomp... ...and a few more to be added. Check back. Writing: Notebook exercise: CP p.184
#4: analyze your sentences A unrhymed poem in iambic pentameter
or iambic tetrameter. Turn in 2 copies of this poem to me this week.
One copy should be formatted as usual. The second copy should be printed
double-space or triple-space, then scanned by hand. Please see the exercises
A Poem in Four Steps & Put Some Life in
It! to help you with this assignment. I've added
a link to bring you back to this page. Recommended: A poem paying particular attention to matters of sentence & grammar raised by this week’s reading. You may want to begin your poem from suggestions in CP p.183-185 #1, 2, 6, 7, or 8 E-Mail: Send a poem to your small group & to me by noon Sunday.
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