English 98: Junior Tutorial
This Century in American Poetry (1914-2014)
Course Requirements:
 weekly attendance and active participation in tutorial sessions
 oral presentation (15 min) on theoretical, critical, or historical readings
 prospectus (2pp) and bibliography (2pp) in preparation for Junior Paper
 library consultation with Laura Farwell-Blake, English Dept. Research Librarian
 Junior Paper (20-25pp)
Required Texts:
 The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vols. 1 and 2, ed.
Ramazani, Ellmann and O’Clair (2003)
 The New American Poetry, 1945-1960, ed. Donald Allen (1999)
 other literary and critical readings, available online in .pdf format
Schedule of Readings
Week 1: Fragments and Ruins: Archaeologies of Modernism
Ezra Pound, selections from Cathay (1915), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920)
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Preludes” (1917), The Waste Land (1922)
Pound, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” (1913), selections from ABC of Reading (1934)
Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919)
Week 2: Flux and Materials: Principles of Aesthetic Construction
Gertrude Stein, selections from Tender Buttons (1914), “If I Told Him” (1923)
Ezra Pound, selections from A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930)
Franco Marinetti, “Futurist Manifesto” (1909)
Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, BLAST (1914): “Long Live the Vortex!”, “Manifesto – 1,”
“Manifesto – 2”
Pound, “Machine Art” (1927-30)
Wendy Steiner, selection from Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance: Literary Portraiture of
Gertrude Stein (1979)
Week 3: The Poet as Visionary I: Hart Crane
Hart Crane, selections from White Buildings (1926), selections from The Bridge (1930)
Crane, “A Letter to Harriet Monroe” (1926)
Harold Bloom, introduction to The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (2001)
Week 4: Word-Machines: Objectivity and Engagement
William Carlos Williams, selections from Kora in Hell (1919) and Spring and All (1923)
Marianne Moore, selections from Observations (1920)
Louis Zukofsky, selections from “A” (1928-1937)
Zukofsky, “Sincerity and Objectification” (1931)
Williams, Introduction to The Wedge (1940)
Hugh Kenner, selection from A Homemade World (1975)
Michael Heller, selection from Conviction's Net of Branches: Essays on the Objectivist Poets and
Poetry (1985)
Week 5: The Harlem Renaissance and the Stakes of Self-Representation
Langston Hughes, selections from The Weary Blues (1926) and Montage of a Dream Deferred
(1951)
Gwendolyn Brooks, selections from A Street in Bronzeville (1945) and In the Mecca (1968)
Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, poems
music by Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker
Alain Locke, introduction and excerpts from The New Negro (1925)
W. E. B. DuBois, “The Negro Mind Reaches Out” (1925)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., selection from Black Literature and Literary Theory (1984)
Week 6: The Poet as Philosopher I: Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens, selections from Harmonium (1923), Ideas of Order (1936), The Auroras of
Autumn (1950), The Rock (1955)
Stevens, “The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words” and “Imagination as Value,” from The
Necessary Angel (1960)
J. Hillis Miller, selection from Poets of Reality (1965)
Helen Vendler, selections from Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire (1986)
Week 7: Mid-Century Poetics and the “Confessional” Legacy
Robert Lowell, selections from Life Studies (1959), For the Union Dead (1964), and The Day By
Day (1977)
Elizabeth Bishop, selections from North & South. A Cold Spring (1955), Questions of Travel
(1965), Geography III (1976)
M. L. Rosenthal, “Poetry as Confession” (1959)
Robert Lowell, “A Conversation with Frederick Seidel” (1961)
David Kalstone, selections from Five Temperaments (1977)
** BRIEF IN-CLASS PRESENTATION OF YOUR PROSPECTUS **
Week 8: The “Confessional” Legacy, Continued
John Berryman, selections from The Dream Songs (1969)
Robert Lowell, “John Berryman” (1964)
Helen Vendler, selection from The Given and the Made (1995)
Adam Kirsch, selection from The Wounded Surgeon (2005)
Week 9: The Poet as Visionary II: The Black Mountain Poets and the Beats
Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” [whole poem], selections from Howl (1956)
Robert Creeley, poems
Jack Spicer, poems
Charles Olson, “Projective Verse” (1950)
Denise Levertov, “Some Notes on Organic Form” (1965)
Paul Breslin, selection from The Psycho-Political Muse: American Poetry Since the Fifties (1987)
Week 10: The Poet as Philosopher II: John Ashbery and the New York School
John Ashbery, selections from Some Trees (1956) and Houseboat Days (1977), “The System”
from Three Poems (1972), “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” (1975)
Frank O’Hara, selections from Meditations in an Emergency (1957) and Lunch Poems (1964)
Frank O’Hara, “Personism: A Manifesto” (1959)
John Ashbery, “The Art of Poetry 33” [interview], The Paris Review (1983)
Christopher Nealon, “John Ashbery’s Optional Apocalypse,” from The Matter of Capital (2011)
** ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE **
Week 11: Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Poetics
Adrienne Rich, selections from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems 1950-2001 (2002)
Rita Dove, selections from Thomas and Beulah (1986) and Mother Love (1996)
Louise Glück, selections from Poems 1962-2012 (2013)
Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken” and “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian
Existence” (1979-1985)
Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury” (1985)
Louise Glück, “Against Sincerity,” from Proofs and Theories (1995)
Week 12: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: Revisions of Subjectivity
Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews, eds., selections from The LANGUAGE Book (1984)
Lyn Hejinian, selections from My Life (1987)
Susan Howe, selections from The Midnight (2003)
Robert Grenier, “I HATE SPEECH” (1971)
Marjorie Perloff, “Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject” (1999)
** FINAL PAPER DUE BY 5PM WEDNESDAY OF FINALS WEEK **