POSTMODERN AMERICAN POETRY SYLLABUS
EN397B
. Postmodern Poetry
--T-R--
9:30-10:45 am
LOVE 318
Ira Sadoff Ml 224 x.5283; e-mail isadoff@colby.edu
Office hours, Mon., Thurs. 1-3 PM & by appt.; extensive e-mail hours
Note on the syllabus: Those who’ve worked with me in the past know how much I value organization
and a coherent overview for a syllabus and class. This class, though, represents some particular
challenges -- including challenging texts and theoretical material -- so how long we spend on each
author will remain somewhat fluid (I want to make certain ). We surely will not get to all the poems in
the syllabus in class (you may then use the remaining poems in papers) and, depending to some
degree on class interest and the centrality of the material, we may spend more time on some poets
than others. Therefore you want to make sure you’re up on assignments. If you miss a class, don’t
hesitate to e-mail me or a classmate concerning which poems and essays we’ll discuss in the next
class.
Sept. 6 intro to postmodernism: values:
Lyotard, Nicholson quotes
enlightenment, Hooker, Romanticism, modernism
Eagleton “What is Ideology” (hdt)
Sept.11 Gelpi_excpt_The Genealogy of Postmodernism
klages. Postmodernism_Modernism_the Enlightenment. excpt
Antecedents: Gertrude Stein, “Composition as Explanation,”
http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no8/stein.html or hdt
Aiden Thompson on the meaning of Meaning in Stein…” (hdt)
Supp.
Lehman on Postmodernism
Kellner and Best, intro (reserve) pp.21-end of chapter-history of POMO reserve
Cahoone, MODERNISM TO POSTMODERNISM (intro)
Sept. 13 Personality study (hdt) “Are We Who We Think We Are?”
Antecedents: continued
Stein: “Picasso” (hdt) “Paris, France,” “Arthur: a Grammar”
“A Piece of Coffee”
Intro to Stein: Perloff on Stein, POETIC LICENSE: pp.146-9; 155-157 reserve
Vooris on Perloff on Stein (double play) hdt
Fragmented self, artifice:
Interrogating the instability of the self:
The gulf between language and the inexpressible
Breakdown of the fourth wall
Excpt. Caze_”Re-Configuring Lyricism…” on Voice
Jorie Graham
"To the Reader," pp.61-63 2007
"What the End is For" 66-69
“The Region of Unlikeness“ pp.115-118
“The Marriage”pp.132-134
Supplementary
The Veil," pp.87-89
"Fission," pp.99-103
"Orpheus." 58-60
"Vertigo," pp.64-5
"Daphne," pp.70-73
"From the New World" pp.116-120
What is Called Thinking, pp.140-142
“The Phase After History,” pp.148-152
Alice Notley from MYSTERIES OF SMALL HOUSES
“Experience” 19-20
“1970” pp.32-33
“Would Want to be in my Wildlife” p.1-2 *
“Choosing Styles -1972,” pp. 34-35
“I’m just rigid enough,” pp.5-6
“Synchronous Chronology,” pp.13-14
“As Good as Anything”pp.25-7
SUPP.
“Obnoxious Truth” pp.15-16
“Go In and Out the Window,” pp.28-9
“A Baby is Born….”pp.38-39
Place Myself in New York…p.56
”Diversey Street,” pp.43--4
“Waveland…”pp.47-48
Olena Kalytik Davis
O.K.Davis “The lais of long days,” pp.17-18
“six apologies,lord” p.21-22
“the unbosoming,”p.22-23
“may be you are like me: scared and awake”
“The Lyric ‘I’ Drives to Pick Up Her Children from School:
A Poem in the Postconfessional Mode,” hdt (from TIN HOUSE)
Supplementary
Francesca poems
Blog poetry
Neo-formalism,
Richman, Gioia, Steele, “Toward the Winter Solstice,”
essay on prosody (Emails)
Gioia, “notes on New Fomralism” (hdt) Hudson Review, 1987
Vs.
Hejinian, “The Rejection of Closure” reserve
“Redo” (hdt)
Byers, “The Closing of the American Line…” hdt
Byars “Expansive Poetry and ideology” res
Ted Berrigan “Sonnet.” hdt.
Absurd: Hetroglossia
Volkman definition prose poem: reconfiguring form
Sadoff “On the Margins”( excpt)
Russell Edson, from THE CHILDHOOD OF AN EQUESTRIAN: (hdt)
“Antimatter” “Conjugal” “The Retirement of the Elephant” “An Investigation”
Anne Waldman, “Stereo” (hdt)
Notley “The year of the premonitory dream” pp.61-2
Haryette Mullen prose poems
Mullen, “Black nikes” p.11
“European folk tale”p.24
“Coals to Newcastle” p.16 –18 note :Selling coal to Newcastle is an idiom of British origin describing
a foolhardy or pointless action.[1] It refers to the fact that historically, the economy of Newcastle upon
Tyne was heavily dependent on the mining, distribution and sale of coal — by the time the phrase was
first recorded in 1538, 15,000 tons of coal were being exported annually from the area[4] —therefore
any attempt to sell coal to Newcastle would be doomed to failure because of the economic principle of
supply and demand.[1]
“Sleeping with the Dictionary,” 67 ( Kristeva, chora hdt)
Supp.
Mullen, “Kamasutra sutras” 45,
“Lunar lutheran” 48
“Natual” 53
“We’re not responsible”
Zbeniew Herbert, “from the Technology of Tears” (hdt)
Reinventing literature/Reconfiguring form: continued
Classes
Diane Williams,(hdt) with Klages on Judith Butler, “Gender Trouble”
http://www.colorado.edu/English/courses/ENGL2012Klages/butler.html
Susan Wheeler (hdt)
Koch “Kidding Around” (hdt) with. Keats “Ode to a Nightingale”
(note:) Odes must be direct addresses to the object being glorified
(or at the very least, appreciated), and often contain extensive figurative language)
Mullen “Dim Lady,”p.20 with Shakespeare Dark Lady Sonnet #131
“Dis-spelt,”p.27 w/Plath “Tulips”
Davis, “poem convincing you to leave your wife,”
w/Dickinson, “I Cannot Live with You”
caze “Reconfiguring Lyricism” web JSTORS
Supplementary
Ted Berrigan, “Sonnet,” handout
Ashbery, “The Songs We Know Best,”pp.302-4
John Ashbery, SELECTED POEMS
Antecedents:
Frank O’Hara, “A Step Away From Them”
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-step-away-from-them/
supp. “On Personism”
http://www.poetspath.com/transmissions/messages/ohara.html
from Ashbery, SELECTED POEMS
“Soonest Mended”pp.87“Mixed Feelings,” pp.182-3
“And Ut Pictura Poesis”,p.235
“Ode to Bill” (hdt)
“What is Poetry?” p.236
Fear of Death (hdt)
“Grand Gallop” (esp.stanzas 1, 3, ..”and “Kinder in Oregon…”
till the end) pp.172-9
“Train Reaching Out of the Sea,” p.266
“The Ongoing Story,” p.307-8
Supplementary
“Worsening Situation,”pp.165-6 “As One Put Drunk in a Packet Boat,”pp.163-4
“Scherezade,”pp.169-171, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” section pp.188-204;
“Saying it To Keep…” p.226,“Daffy Duck in Hollywood,” p.227-230,“Friends,”p.240
“The Haunted Landscape,”pp.263-4“My Erotic Double,” p.265 “Paradoxes and Oxymorons,”p.283
Ashbery interview http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/ashbery/general.htm
THE LANGUAGE POETS: INTRO
Bernstein, “Semblance”
“Language Poetry and The Lyric Subject” (Excepts). Marjorie Perloff
Bartlett “Language poetries”
Hartley “Language Poetries”
Hehinian, from
MY LIFE w/Last lines….
“As for We Who Love…” p.9 (end w/ assemble all the relatives)
“What is the Meaning…”pp.17-18 (Insane, in common parlance”)
“The Obvious Analogy…” p.19(And could it be musical if I hate it”)
“Like Plump Birds…”pp. 21-23(“lay the vanishing vernal day”)
“We have Come a Long Way…p.30 w/Stein (seized by the fox, who swallowed it in a moment)
“So Upright, twilight pp.71-73, (“the same about them all”)
“The Obvious Analogy…” p.19(And could it be musical if I hate it”)
“Like Plump Birds…”pp. 21-23(“lay the vanishing vernal day”)
“We have Come a Long Way…p.30 w/Stein(seized by the fox, who swallowed it in a moment)
“So Upright, twilight pp.71-73, (“the same about them all”)
Supp. Essays:
Messerli reseve
Perloff LANGUAGE POETRY AND THE LYRIC SUBJECT:
“Sociopolitical (i.e., Romantic) Difficulty in Modern Poetry and Aesthetics* Robert Kaufman,
Kim “Language Poetry dissident practices” web
Texts:
My Life by Lyn Hejinian
Sleeping With the Dictionary by Harryette Mullen
Dream of a Unified Field by Jorie Graham
Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards...... by Olena K. Davis
Selected Poems by John Ashbery
Mysteries of Small Houses by Alice Notley
Expectations: I direct the class as a discussion group, a community of learners, so students are
expected to prepare the poems before coming to class, including bringing questions to stimulate
interchange among students. Always bring your texts to class: we'll refer to them all the time. Class
discussion counts as part of class grade. Students are expected to attend and contribute to all
classes; you'll be permitted two unexcused absences during a semester; if you don’t bring your text,
you’ll be absent.
Papers:
Two choices for writing papers:
My first choice (because it will take time to integrate these concepts and synthesize them into rigorous
critical thinking) would be one long 12-15 page paper due Monday before Thanksgiving break
for such an ambitious project, I will require a thesis paragraph and project outline 2 weeks before
paper due date. The project proposal will count as 20% of your grade on the paper. It should include
your approach to the texts, a statement about how it reflects postmodernist concerns, a tentative list
of secondary sources (if your paper’s not close readings of related texts). You will receive feedback on
your proposals at least a week before the paper is due. Project Proposal due, Mon. Nov.12th, paper
due Wed. Nov. 28th 9 A.M. NO EXTENSIONS.
Supplementary texts provide background and/or possible texts for paper selections. Do not write on
texts we’ve already discussed in class.
Should you choose two shorter 6-8 page papers, I’m interested in your direct experience with the text
and NOT scholarship. Should you use scholarship and it’s not attributed, that’s plagiarism, and I take
plagiarism personally as a violation of trust and will deal with it seriously and institutionally.
Due dates short paper 1 wed. October 17th, short paper 2: Wed. Nov. 21st 9 AM
For shorter papers, students will be allowed one extension if they give at least 48 hours advance
notice. Unexcused late papers will be penalized. I will not accept any papers after the last day of class.
Forum: Additionally, virtually every Monday by midnight (except when papers are due) students will
write two substantive paragraphs on our class forum, responding to a question that will create a
dialogue and help structure thinking about poems for class discussion. Students should respond to
one another, argue, quote freely from texts; if you respond early you might check the forums to see if
you want to supplement your earlier responses. (late respondents will find a lot of what they wanted to
say has already been said). The forums offer the opportunity for informality, risk-taking and respectful
disagreement: you will NOT be graded on how right or wrong your interpretation, but rather the
substantive and attentive way you approach the texts and comments by other students. The
responses will not be graded individually, but collectively will be worth 25% of your grade. You will
receive e-mail responses to the work if your entry seems particularly pointed or responsive, or if the
quality of work needs improvement. If you miss more than one forum response, your grade will suffer.
If your early responses don't respond sufficiently with specificity to the text, I will email you with advice
or ask you to come in for conference so I can help. Late responses, because the work will have been
discussed in class, cannot be counted.
Forum URL: http://www.colby.edu/fusetalk/forum/?forumid=196
PLEASE CHECK TO SEE IF YOU CAN GET ON THE FORUM THIS WEEK. I.T.S. is
not available over the weekends. If you’re having trouble getting on the forum, contact
ITS and me please.
You’ll need to log on with yr Colby password: read other replies, respond to them with a reply (this is a
conversation among yourselves); suggestions; write reply on word document and cut and paste onto
forum in case your reply gets lost, as occasionally happens); the closer to the deadline you respond
the more likely what you’ve been thinking has already been said, and that will diminish the content of
your forum entry.
Question: When the young narrator of Komunyakaa's "Venus'flytraps" says "I wonder what death tastes like," he's conflating two of the urgent
concerns of the poem: death and the senses. How do they go together, or how or why is
the narrator confusing the two?
Sample forum entry:
Everyone has such great insights! I fond Amanda's analysis of the music in the speaker's
head to be very insightful and helpful for me to understand the poem. I had not found a link
Jessica Laniewski between the speaker's music and the poem except that it was another sense by which the boy
experiences his world. Also, Ellen's link between the birds and the bees and sex and the
language the father uses in the calling on the mother is very astute. It was a fascinating way
to see the link between the sexualizing of the process of bees making honey and the
"illegitimate" sex the speaker's parents had to produce him.
I found that in Komunyakaa's "Venus's Fly Traps" the speaker sees death as the end of the
senses and thus conflates the two. I viewed the speaker as a five year old ("I am five")
knowing about the things around him, but not knowing what they mean or what they do.
Although he knows of death he does not exactly comprehend what it is. Instead to him it is
another thing to experience and if the things around him, bees, and fields, and "deep sunny
grass" can be tasted and felt, why could not death? As a five year old the speaker knows
things he probably shouldn't as he compares the mouths of "tall flowers" to the place
"where/Babies come from" and of desperate, poor men "hiding in boxcars." He also says that
"My mama says I'm a mistake./ That I made her a bad girl" and though he does not
understand her true meaning, the five year old is told that he was born out of wedlock. He has
all the material yet he can't build the bridge to exactly what it means. Although he reveals that
he knows adult "things," he still is a five year old as he threatens "don't mess with me/ 'cause I
have my Lone Ranger/Six-shooter. I can hurt/ you with questions/Like silver bullets." This is a
sad image as the speaker believes in the infallibility of his toy weapon, yet shows cognizance
that certain questions can make others squirm and the enjambment of "I can hurt" shows that
even as a young boy he realizes his power as a man. The idea of death is shadowed by this
threat of violence as well as the "tall flowers in my dreams...they eat all the people..." Although
he is a five year old, he clearly knows things atypical to someone his age. When I was not
much older than the speaker I remember lying on the sandy beach outside our house and
suddenly realizing that someday I would die and the feel of the salty wind and the wet taste of
the sea would be gone. Just as the speaker does, I saw it in terms of the death of taste and
touch and sight. It was a paralyzing feeling that the gift of these senses would die. My point
being in this personal note is that young children see death as another experience until the
realization of its finality. While we see life and that one thing can mean the ending of another,
we may not appreciate it until we are older. Like Ellen, I found this poem and its memories
startlingly juxtaposed to Komunyakaa's war poems. The death that the speaker wonders of in
terms of the senses was played out for the poet many times during his years in the military. In
the poem the speaker's experiences death when he says that "one afternoon I saw/ What a
train did to a cow" yet for him he connects it only with the danger of straying too close to the
tracks. He also knows that the little "bees/ Can't live without their flowers." The speaker is
confronted with the daily struggle of life and death yet does not entirely perceive what the end
of life means. He sees the world as right and wrong, where "tall flowers" demolish everyone
"except the ones I love." The end of ones existence is still painted as right vs. wrong, where
his youthful love can save his family from death.
Everything the speaker does in the poem is active whether he is "wading out into deep/Sunny
grass" or dancing for someone or watching the men in the boxcars. His senses are always
involved and the young speaker is always the one performing the action. The use of repetition
throughout the poem, "I am five," adds to the childlike and wistful mood of the poem. The
short, well punctuated lines mimic the image of a child wandering through a field, his thoughts
rapid and free flowing. This is also supported by the way the speaker moves from one event
or experience in the poem to the next. However, death is also represented in this poem by the
end of the child's innocence. Even though he speaks and thinks like a five year old he has
been robbed of his naive youth by "hear[ing] people/Telling each other secrets." In essence,
he knows that he is illegitimate, that bullets can hurt and that a race of poor men, cast off by
society exists in those boxcars. These realizations that the reader makes are contrasted with
the speaker's innocent ideas of flowers reaching to the sea and bees living in "little white
houses."