ENGL 372
Poetry and the Body
Kara van de Graaf | | Fall 2015
kara.vandegraaf@gmail.com
Course Materials:
ENGL 372 Course Reader: Poetry and the Body
Other materials may be distributed via link or PDF on Blackboard.
Course Description:
Our bodies are our gateways to the world, the vehicle through which we experience everything in
our lives. In this course, we will explore how poets have used the body as a means to examine
human experience, from desire and illness to the metaphysical and the digital. Together, we will
read broadly from poetic tradition as well as contemporary writers, discussing approaches and
strategies writers employ, as well as the limits of language to engage with the body. Students in
this course will be expected to participate in lively discussion, complete in-class writing
exercises, and write weekly craft responses. In addition, students will produce a substantial
packet of poems responding to our course theme and contribute to in class workshops of their
poems.
Course Calendar
Note: All readings and assignments are due for the meetings listed.
Week 1
Introductions
Tuesday
Introductions, syllabus
Thursday
Discuss:
Selections from A Natural History of the Senses (Diane Ackerman)
Due:
Imitation Exercises
Week 2
The Erotic Body
Tuesday
Discuss:
Selections from If not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (trans. Anne Carson)
“Whoso List to Hunt, I Know where is an Hind” (Sir Thomas Wyatt)
“My mistresses eyes are nothing like the sun” (William Shakespeare)
“To His Coy Mistress” (Andrew Marvell)
“Rhetorical Contract in the Erotic Poem” from Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric
Poetry (Linda Gregerson)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 1
Week 3
The Erotic Body
Tuesday
Discuss:
“Song of Myself” (Walt Whitman)
“Radiance versus Ordinary Light”
“As from a Quiver of Arrows” (Carl Phillips)
“Noli Me Tangere” (Traci Brimhall)
“Egyptian Cotton” (Richie Hofmann)
“Meretricious Kisses” from Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (Anne
Townsend)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 2
Week 4
The Sacred Body
Tuesday
Discuss:
“Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God”
“Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud” (John Donne)
“Church Monuments” (George Herbert)
“Quarantine” (Malachi Black)
“First Confession”
“Again, the Body as Temple” (Mary Szybist)
Selections from The New Testament (Jericho Brown)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 3
Week 5
The Disabled or Ill Body
Tuesday
Discuss:
“The Applicant”
“The Munich Mannequins”
“Tulips” (Sylvia Plath)
“Atlantis” (Mark Doty)
“Lesson”
“Winter Field” (Ellen Bryant Voigt)
Selections from The Body Mutinies (Lucia Perillo)
Selections from Illness as Metaphor (Susan Sontag)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 4
Week 6
Death and the Elegy
Tuesday
Discuss:
“In Memory of W.B. Yeats” (Auden)
“Lycidas” (Milton)
“Myth”
“After Your Death” (Natasha Trethewey)
Selections from The Dead and the Living (Sharon Olds)
“The Modern Elegy” from Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to
Heaney (Jahan Ramazani)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 5
Week 7
Death and the Elegy
Tuesday
Discuss:
“After Suicide”
“Elegy in X Parts” (Matt Rasmussen)
“Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh XXI Dynasty” (Thomas James)
Selections from Elegy (Larry Levis)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 6
Week 8
Midterm Conferences
Due at conference:
Poem revisions and reflection
Week 9
The Body and Otherness
Tuesday
Discuss:
“Incident” (Countee Cullen)
Selections from Citizen (Claudia Rankine)
Interview with Claudia Rankine from Lightbox Poetry
Selections from My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge (Paul Guest)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 7
Week 10
The Gendered Body
Tuesday
Discuss:
“In the Waiting Room” (Elizabeth Bishop)
Selections from Incident at the Edge of Bayonet Woods (Paula Bohince)
Selections from Boy with Flowers (Ely Shipley)
“Performative Acts and Gender Construction” from Gender Trouble (Judith Butler)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 8
Body and Identity
Week 11
Tuesday
Discuss:
“Parsley” (Rita Dove)
“The Colonel” (Carolyn Forche)
Selections from Slow Lightning (Eduardo C. Corral)
“Persimmons”
“Eating Alone” (Li-Young Lee)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 9
Week 12
Poem as Body
Tuesday
Discuss:
Selections from The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Emily Dickinson)
Images from The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson
Selections from A Humument (Tom Phillips)
“It is Pretty to Think”
“Notes on a 39-Year-Old Body” (Mary Szybist)
“The Art of the Written Image” from Figuring the Word by Johanna Drucker
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 10
Mind/Body
Week 13
Tuesday
Discuss:
“Meditations at Lagunitas” (Robert Hass)
Selections from Middle Earth (Henri Cole)
“The Dream of the Unified Field” (Jorie Graham)
“The Sublime: Origins and Definitions” from Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry
(David Baker)
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 11
Week 14
The Digital Body
Tuesday
Discuss:
“Toward Embodied Virtuality” from How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies
in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Hayles)
Selections from Electronic Literature Collection: Volume 2
Due:
Craft Response
Thursday
Workshop
Due:
Poem 12
Week 15
Working Towards the Final Portfolio
Tuesday
Discuss:
Strategies for revision
Thursday
Workshop
Final Portfolio: due one week after our last class.