Modern Poetry
English 3323.001
Fall 2006
TTh 11:00-12:15
Professor Paul Cohen
FH 358
Phone: 245-7685
Email: cohen@txstate.edu
Course Web site: http://www.english.swt.edu/cohen_p/poetry/poetry.html
Office Hours: TTh 9:30-11:00 and 2:00-3:15, and by appointment
TEXTBOOK: The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Third
Edition, Volumes 1 and 2
REQUIREMENTS: You will write a short paper early in the course for 20% of
your course grade, and a longer research paper late in the course for 40% of your
course grade. You will take a mid-term exam and a final exam, each worth 20%
of your course grade. Each exam will consist of objective questions and an essay
question, and each part will count as half of the exam grade.
ATTENDANCE: I expect you to attend every class meeting at the appointed
time. If you miss a class, I will assume that you are an adult who understands
your responsibilities, so you must have a good reason. Do not bring me excuses.
If you miss a class, you are responsible for finding out everything that went on in
your absence. While I will not use attendance records as such in determining
grades, missing classes will seriously hurt your ability to succeed in the course.
Entering the classroom late distracts the class. If you think that you will need to
be late or absent frequently, you should not take the course.
DROPS AND WITHDRAWALS: My policy is that in both the University’s
Undergraduate Catalog and Student Handbook:
After the automatic “W” period, faculty assign grades to students who
officially drop classes or withdraw from Texas State. Faculty assign the
“W” grade only to those students who have a passing average at the time
the drop/withdraw action is officially completed. Otherwise, faculty
assign the “F” grade.
You will not have any grades by the end of the automatic “W” period. If you are
considering dropping and your average is failing, do not ask me for a W. I
absolutely will not consider it.
STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS: Students who need special accommodations (as documented by the Office of Disability Services) should identify
themselves at the beginning of the term. The Department of English and I are
dedicated to providing these students with necessary academic adjustments and
auxiliary aids to facilitate their participation and performance in the classroom.
COURSE CALENDAR (subject to change, as announced in class):
Parenthetical page numbers indicate the beginnings of poems in the Modern (M)
and Contemporary (C) volumes. We will read the works without page numbers
on the course Web site and/or in class.
August 24: Introduction
August 29: Electronic resources
August 31: Prosody
September 5: Prosody
September 7: Marianne Moore: Poetry (M438)
Archibald MacLeish: Ars Poetica (M515)
Wallace Stevens: Of Modern Poetry (M255)
Mark Strand: Eating Poetry (C621)
September 12: Thomas Hardy: The Darkling Thrush (M48)
A.E. Housman: Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff (M88)
September 14: W.B. Yeats: No Second Troy (M101)
W.B. Yeats: Easter, 1916 (M105)
September 19: W.B. Yeats: Leda and the Swan (M118)
W.B. Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium (M123)
September 21: Gertrude Stein: from Tender Buttons (M180)
Gertrude Stein: If I Told Him
Gertrude Stein: Guillaume Apollinaire (M186)
September 26: Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (M244)
Wallace Stevens: Anecdote of the Jar (M246)
Wallace Stevens: The Emperor of Ice-Cream (M248)
September 28: Wallace Stevens: The Idea of Order at Key West (M249)
Wallace Stevens: from The Man with the Blue Guitar (M251)
October 3: Ezra Pound: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (M354)
October 5: T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land (M472)
October 10: Waste Land parodies
James Joyce: letter
Louis Zukofsky: from Poem Beginning “The” (Dedication and First
Movement) (M733)
Hugh MacDiarmid: from In Memoriam James Joyce
William Empson: Missing Dates (M783)
October 12: Mid-term exam
October 17: Dylan Thomas: The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the
Flower (C102)
Dylan Thomas: In My Craft or Sullen Art (C110)
October 19: Allen Ginsberg: Howl (C337)
Allen Ginsberg: from Kaddish (C349)
October 24: Adrienne Rich: Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers (C459)
Derek Walcott: from Omeros (C520)
October 26: Combinatory and appropriative poetry
Raymond Queneau: Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes
Harry Mathews: The Imbeciles
Tom Phillips: A Humument
October 31: Language Poetry
Susan Howe: from Thorow (C689)
Susan Howe: Rückenfigur (C690)
Lyn Hejinian: from My Life (C789)
Charles Bernstein: The Kiwi Bird in the Kiwi Tree (C910)
Charles Bernstein: from The Lives of the Toll Takers (C911)
November 2: Kenneth Goldsmith: from 73 Poems
Kenneth Goldsmith: from No. 111
November 7: Poetry and Music
W.H. Auden: The Composer
Mina Loy: The Widow’s Jazz (M282)
Langston Hughes: from Montage of a Dream Deferred (M700)
November 9: Poetry and Music
Frank O’Hara: The Day Lady Died (C365)
Amiri Baraka: Monk’s World (C639)
Michael S. Harper: Reuben, Reuben (C700)
Michael S. Harper: Dear John, Dear Coltrane (C702)
Kenneth Goldsmith Sings Frederic Jameson
November 14: Poetry and Art
W.B. Yeats: The Tower (M118)
Frank O’Hara: Why I Am Not a Painter (C369)
November 16: Poetry and Art
Wallace Stevens: The Man with the Blue Guitar (M251)
Allen Ginsberg: Kaddish (C349)
Jerome Rothenberg: Poland/1931
November 21: Poetry and Art
John Ashbery: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (C395)
Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons (M180)
November 28: Translation
Paul Celan: Todesfuge
Anna Akhmatova: Requiem
November 30: The Future of Poetry
December 7: Final examination: 11:30-2:00