Syllabus: Poetic Form and Theory (Fall 2009)
ARHU 319 section 0201; M 5:00-7:30pm; DOR 0128
Mr. Gerald Maa
office: 2220 Tawes, desk # 69 email: maa@umd.edu
Note: This syllabus is subject to change depending on new developments or pace of the
class. You are responsible for any and all changes announced in class. If you miss some
or all of a class session for any reason, contact a classmate about changes to the syllabus.
Complete all readings and assignments by the listed date. Bring all readings to class on
the day they are due.
Texts:
ASA: Ali, Agha Shahid. Call Me Ishmeal Tonight. Norton, 1998. [ISBN:0393317617]
JB: Berryman, John. The Dream Songs. FSG, 2007. [ISBN: 0374530661]
HB: Bloom, Harold, ed. The Best Poems of the English Language. Harper Perennial,
2007 [ISBN:0060540425]
WH: Harmon, William, ed. Classic Writings on Poetry. U Columbia, 2005
[ISBN: 023112371]
MK: Kinzie, Mary. A Poet’s Guide to Poetry. U Chicago, 1999 [ISBN: 0226437396]
31 Aug: Introduction to Course. Anglo-Saxon. Meter. Reading as a Writer
Poems:
Prose:
7 Sept: Labor Day: no class
14 Sept: Blank Verse. Form and Attention
9/14 Last Day of Schedule Adjustment
Poems: Birches, Frost (HB 820-1); Aurora Leigh, fifth Book, Browning (WH 405-21);
Lines, Wordsworth (HB 326-9); The Idea of Order at Key West, Stevens (HB
832-3); From the Porch, Koethe (ph)
Prose: Moore (photocopy); HB 1-29; MK 1-45, 215-61
Search: 3 in course texts; 3 outside (1 variation)
Assignment: write at least twenty lines of Anglo-Saxon that focuses on an object
Other: meter worksheet
21 Sept: Couplets. Form and Attention, cont
Poems: the General Prologue, Chaucer (HB 32-7); Adam’s Curse, Yeats (HB 767-8);
With a Guitar, to Jane (HB 435-7); My Last Duchess, Browning (HB 658-9); The
J Car, Gunn (ph)
Prose: Poe (WH 429); MK 262-89
Search: 3 in course texts; 3 outside (2 variations i.e. unrhymed, unmetered, etc)
Assignment: Couplet Narrative (MK III)
28 Sept: Ballads. Personality and Tradition
Poems: Tom O’Bedlam’s Song (HB 150-4); The Walrus and the Carpenter, Carroll (HB
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757-60); My Life had stood—a Loaded Gun—, Dickinson (HB 584-5); Song,
Rossetti (HB 711); The Ballad of Rudolph Reed, Brooks (ph)
Prose: Eliot (photocopy); O’Hara (photocopy); MK 266-9, 45-75
Search: 3 in course texts; 3 outside (1 musical song, 2 variations)
Assignment: Ballad of Metamorphosis (MK VI)
30 Sept: WH&N: Fady Joudah and Anthony Doerr
5 Oct: The Line and Language. Across Languages
Poems: Colome (packet); Whoso List to Hung, Wyatt/Petrarch (HB 53-5); The Seafarer,
tr. Pound (ph); The Infinite, Leopardi, three separate translations (ph); The Last
Day, tr. Sze (ph); Ghazal, tr. Ali (ASA 78)
Prose: (WH 507, photocopy); Sze (photocopy); MK 75-110
Search: 3 poems with both a ‘loyal’ translation and a variation; 5 translations
Assignment: literary translation
12 Oct: Tercets (terza rima, triplet, etc). Writing as Re-Vision
Poems: The Triumph of Life, Shelley (HB 438-56); The Eagle, Tennyson (HB 596);
A Fate’s Brief Memoir, Ali (ASA 59-62); Supernatural Love, Schnackenberg (ph);
The Gulf, Walcott (ph)
Prose: Rich (photocopy)
Search: 2 in course texts; 4 outside (3 variations)
Assignment: write at least 24 lines of tercets with some sort of rhyme scheme.
Incorporate some episode from an epic or foundational text into a personal
experience, foregrounding the social self.
19 Oct: Quatrains. Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Poems: The Ecstasy (HB 141-3); April Mortality, Adams (HB 936-7); Last Lines, Bronte
(HB 724-5); The Owl, Thomas (HB 805); The Finger, Creeley (ph)
Prose: Wordsworth (WH 277)
Search: 3 in course texts; 3 outside (2 variations)
Assignment: Descriptive Quatrains (MK I)
26 Oct: Stanzas (ottava rima, spenserien, nonce). The Study of Poetry
Poems: Ode to a Nightingale, Keats (HB 463-5); from Don Juan, Byron (HB 406-7);
Israfel, Poe (HB 518-20); Church Monuments, Herbert (HB 187); The Whitsun
Weddings, Larkin (ph)
Prose: Arnold (WH 461)
Search: 3 in course texts; 3 outside (2 variations)
Assignment: Dialogue in Nonce Stanzas (MK XI) or Ottava Rima Vision (MK XIII)
28 Oct: WH&N: Mary Jo Bang and Terese Svoboda
2 Nov: The Sonnet. Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855)
Poems: Sonnet LXXIII, Shakespeare (HB 128-9); Sonnet XVIII, Milton (HB 209); If I
should learn, Millay (HB 929-30); At Melville’s Tomb, Crane (HB 949); Blur,
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Cole (ph)
Prose: Whitman (WH 441)
Search: 3 in course texts; 3 outside (2 variations)
Assignment: Sonnet of Dramatized Description (MK II)
9 Nov: The Dream Songs. Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality
11/9 Last Day to Withdraw from Classes with a “W”
Poems: Berryman (JB 3-84)
Prose: (Riding) Jackson (WH 527)
Search: 3 in course texts; 3 outside (2 variations)
Assignment: Sonnet(s) of Secondary Characters (MK XII)
16 Nov: The Ghazal. Finding Models
Poems: all of Ali; Lenox Hill, Ali (ph)
Prose: Ruykeser (photocopy); Hahn (photocopy)
Search: 3 sestinas; 3 pantoums; 3 villanelles
Assignment: with (MK VII), a ghazal sixteen lines or more
23 Nov: Free Verse. Projective Verse
Poems: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d, Whitman (HB 564-71); Orchard,
H.D. (HB 875-6); Come Over and Help Us, Wheelwright (HB 933-5); Jubilato
Agno, Smart (HB 288-90); Women, Bogan (HB 931)
Prose: Olson (photocopy); MK 330-46
Search: 3 of each category of free verse in MK
Assignment: write a Biblical free verse and an Imagism free verse that shares the same
narrative, each at least 18 lines long. The setting and character(s) must come
from a piece of visual art.
30 Nov: Blank Verse. The Necessity of Poetry
Poems: from The Tempest, Shakespeare (HB 126-7); from The Prelude, Wordsworth
(HB 348-50); Atlantis, Crane (HB 955-8); Directive, Frost (HB 823-4)
Prose: Shelley (WH 349); Lorde (photocopy)
Search: 3 in course texts; 2 outside (2 variations)
Assignment: blank verse meditation (MK IV)
2 December: WH&N: Kara Candito, Jehanne Dubrow, and Taije Silverman
7 Dec: Farewell
Poems: TBA
Prose: Emerson (WH 385)
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