20th Century American Poetry
ENGL 088.001
Jason Zuzga jasonzuzga@gmail.com
TR 4:30-6:00
Office:FBH room 218 Office Hours: Thursday 6pm - 8pm and by appointment
fulfills requirements:
Sector 1: Theory and Poetics of the Standard Major
Sector 6: 20th Century Literature of the Standard Major
This fast-paced course will provide an immersion in a diverse and exuberant array of
American poetry. We will consider the poem as an artwork made out of words, and
specifically, in this case, words of the English language, asking, immediately, "how does a
poem work?" as well as, more broadly, "what does it mean to make art out of English?" and
"what are the stakes of a poem for various 20th-century United States citizens?" We will
consider individual poems through careful, close readings, but we will also put poems into
context, considering the poem in relation to historical events and the surrounding media such
as 20th century painting, cinema, television and the internet. We will consider the poem as an
object embedded in a rapidly changing world in which language matters in terms of identity
and gender, commerce and desire. Who is speaking in the poem? Authors may include Emily
Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, Ronald Johnson, Lorine
Niedecker, Jack Spicer, Rae Armantrout, Leslie Marmon Silko, Frank O'Hara, Langston Hughes,
Agha Shahid Ali, Claudia Rankine, among many others, Above all, students will gain an
understanding of central themes and issues in 20th-American poetry and will learn about the
properties of language as an art-making medium. Both creative exercises and scholarly work
will be required.
Who can speak? What are the possible voices in poetry?
Class rules:

You are allowed two and only two absences over the
duration of the semester. Further absences MUST be
supported by a signed letter from an adviser as to family
emergency or from health services - otherwise each absence
beyond one will reduce your final grade a full letter grade no exceptions.

NO ELECTRONIC DEVICES MAY BE USED. No cell phones. if
cell phones and texting begin to be a problem everyone will
be required to hand over their phone at the beginning of
class and can collect it at the end of class or during break. I
prefer that you bring hard copies of all readings to class. If
this is impossible for you, let me know and we will make
arrangements. I know that this is very inconvenient, but
experience has shown it is necessary. Anyone found off-task
on laptop will, the first time, automatically lose a half letter
grade. The second time, a full letter grade. The third time
and any subsequent times you will be asked to leave class
and will be counted absent, losing a full letter grade.

You are assumed to be following the UPenn code of
academic integrity. Any violations will be subject to penalty
according to the severity of the infringement.

http://www.upenn.edu/academicintegrity/ai_codeofacademici
ntegrity.html

All class discussion and behavior is expected to be kind,
generous, and supportive of fellow class members. If your
participation seems to be causing issues or distress, I will let
you know outside of class. If the behavior continues, your
class participation grade will be directly impacted.

Basically - just be good people and treat others and you would like to be treated. We will be
moving across sometimes highly emotional topics; please respect and support your fellow
students as they work through the material.
Books:
The Connection of Everyone With Lungs by Juliana Spahr
Eunoia by Christian Bok
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara
Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
Selected Poems by Gertrude Stein
The Lost Lunar Baedecker by Mina Loy
Rooms Are Never Finished by Agha Shahid Ali
Spring and All by William Carlos Williams
My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe
A Several World by Brian Blanchfield
(TBD) by Monica Youn
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
1
Jan 14 R
Discussion:
The Materials of Poetry, or How to Make Art out of Language
2
Jan 19 T
Manifestos and Writing Exercises
“Preface to Lyrical Ballads” By William Wordsworth (1800)
http://www.bartleby.com/39/36.html
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-romanticism
“Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature” by F. T. Marinetti (1909)
http://greeninteger.com/pdfs/marinetti-technical-manifesto-of-futurist-literature.pdf
“DADA Manifesto” by Tristan Tzara (1918)
http://www.391.org/manifestos/1918-dada-manifesto-tristan-tzara.html#.VpKn4JMrLow
“Tradition and the Individual Talent” by T. S. Eliot (1921)
http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html
“Manifesto of Surrealism” by André Breton (1924)
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T340/SurManifesto/ManifestoOfSurrealism.htm
+++
Kenneth Koch: “One Train May Hide Another”
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/one-train-may-hide-another
Kenneth Koch: "Poems By Ships at Sea"
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1992/07/13/poems-by-ships-at-sea
Mark Strand (selections)
http://poetry.newgreyhair.com/post/115607671260/elegy-for-my-father-mark-strand
Sharon Olds (selections)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176442
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176440
Li-Young Lee (selections)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172098
Hugo Ball -- Karawane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_8Wg40F3yo
Alice Notley (selections)
http://www.versedaily.org/2011/acquisition.shtml
“Notes of the Craft of Poetry” by Mark Strand (2000)
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/strand/poetics.htm (scroll down)
“Poetry Can Be Any Damn Thing It Wants” by Mary Ann Caws (2009)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/182834
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-surrealism
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Charles Bernstein “Wreading” Experiments
http://writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/wreading-experiments.html
Bernadette Mayer Writing Exercises
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html
CAConrad somatic poetry exercises
http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/
http://writing.upenn.edu/~taransky/somatic-exercises.pdf
3
Jan 21 R
Walt Whitman
“Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174738
Hart Crane
“Voyages” (1923)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/180083#poem
“From THE BRIDGE: Brooklyn Bridge” (1933)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172024
“At Melville’s Tomb” (1933)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172021
“Chaplinesque” (1933)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172018
“On Chaplinesque”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/crane/chaplinesque.htm
“On Brooklyn Bridge”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/crane/proem.htm
“Crane’s ‘Language of Metaphor’”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/crane/metaphor.htm
Guide to “Voyages”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/180083
“Hart Crane’s Victrola” by Brian Reed (IN FILES)
http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/Crane.html
The Lyric / Romantic “I” - The Lyric Subject
Lyric and Other People (IN FILES)
4
Jan 26 T
Lyric and Other People (IN FILES)
Mina Loy
THE LOST LUNAR BAEDECKER (selections) (1914-1949)
Introduction, “Partuition,” “Songs to Joannes,” Pp 71-82, 94, 109-113, 149-168, 224-229.
Critics on “Love Songs” / “Songs to Joannes”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/loy/joannes.htm
Interview with Loy’s biographer
http://jacketmagazine.com/05/mina-iv.html
"Sexing the Manifesto" in FILES
"Mina Loy" by Joshua Weiner in FILES
"Mina Loy and Futurism' in FILES
"Rediscovering Sources" in FILES
Assignment: In DISCUSSIONS, post your reflections on the similarities and differences
between Hart Crane's poetry and Mina Loy's poetry. You should find several similarities,
several differences, and support yourself with lines from the poems!
5
Jan 28 R
There's a huge amount of reading listed below. Please, at first, only read the material marked
"****" -- that's the essential material. Then, if you are intrigued by a particular poet or topic,
please feel free to go back and read more of the linked to poems and material. What we
really want to tackle here are some of the breaks between romanticism and modernism -- the
role of the poet's voice, deep symbolism of nature as opposed to nature merely presented as
itself, and the poem as object on the page. You'll be asked to address this directly...in today's
assignment. We will need to CONTRAST further -- these movements in relation to work such
as Gertrude Stein's, which may own more to such movements in the visual arts as Cubism,
rather than Imagism or Objectivism, as we'll see next week. As well, keep an eye on time. Do
these poems strain for the universal? Or are they more concerned with the individual
moment...with the idea of singularity, with the idea of ever always "making it NEW" ON that
last phrase, please begin by reading this article:
****https://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-making-of-making-it-new/
IMAGISM
***Imagism: A movement in early Euro-Modernist (?) poetry that included a group of
American and English poets whose poetic program was formulated about 1912 by Ezra
Pound. Imagists were in revolt against the careless thinking and Romantic optimism that
Pound saw prevailing. One of Pound’s early ideas was a belief that a person’s
own subjective perception is a hindrance to true, objective perception of the world; he tried
to discipline his “I” by making it an “eye,” and poetry could help readers do the
same. Accordingly, the Imagists wrote succinct verse of dry clarity and hard outline in which
an exact visual image made a total poetic
statement.http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cftde/3703S01/imagism.htm
Ezra Pound
****“A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” by Ezra Pound (1913) (read the intro here, then skip to the
next link for the full text)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/335
****“A Retrospect” and “A Few Don’ts” by Ezra Pound (1918)
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/retrospect.htm
Ezra Pound Bio
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ezra-pound
****“In a Station of a Metro” (1913)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/1878
****A number of Pound’s poems printed in POETRY along with “In a Station of a Metro”)
(1913)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/2/1#!/20569736/0
Pound on “Vorticism” (a kind of electrified version of Imagism) (1914)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/poetics-essay/238700
Amy Lowell
****“Preface to ‘Some Imagist Poets” (1915)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237876
*****“The Garden by Moonlight” (1919)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/182890#poem
“Venus Transiens” (1915)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/2286
*****“Amy Lowell: The Garden by Moonlight” by D. A. Powell
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/182890#guide
“May Evening in Central Park” (1915)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/6/6#!/20570519 (click on the right
side of the page image to get to the end of the poem)
“Solitaire,” “Red Slippers” (1915)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/6/1#!/20570340/0
Amy Lowell Bio
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/amy-lowell
H.D.
*****“Sea Poppies” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177768 (1916)
“Heat” https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/heat (1922)
*****“Sea Rose” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177769 (1916)
“Sheltered Garden” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177770 (1916)
*****“Evening” http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182468 (1916)
H.D. bio:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/h-d
On H.D. and Pound:
****http://www.lightningdpress.com/blog/ezra-pounds-in-a-station-of-the-metro
*****http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/H-D--the-mother-of-us-all--7085
Jennifer Scappetone
“Vase Poppies” (2010) *note year
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/240782
Writing through Imagism: A Discussion of H.D.'s "Sea Poppies" and Jennifer Scappettone's
"Vase Poppies.”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2686
How might the following be influenced by or departing from IMAGISM? These poets are
considered “Objectivists” (as was Pound) – how is Objectivism different from Imagism?
Some Objectivist Poets:
*****http://zukofsky.weebly.com/key-objectivist-poets.html
*****Objectivist Poetry and Poetics by Rachel Blau DuPlessis (IN FILES)
or https://books.google.com/books?id=Y_B4BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=Objectivist
+Poetry+and+Poetics+by+Rachel+Blau+DuPlessis&source=bl&ots=qBd664NE8E&sig=IwIuzZx
Ssb9flsfDaKSe8dlYMos&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl9Iixrc3KAhXHwj4KHZ9XAd0Q6AEIKzAD#
v=onepage&q=Objectivist%20Poetry%20and%20Poetics%20by%20Rachel%20Blau%20DuPlessi
s&f=false
*****Objectivist Poetry: an influential movement in American verse of the early 1930s which
stressed the importance of concrete detail and the spatial integrity of the poem; its
practitioners avoided metaphorical devices as tending to diffuseness. Louis Zukofsky was the
principal spokesman for the group, of which George Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, and
Carl Rakosiwere other leading members, and produced Poetry's ‘Objectivists’ special issue in
1931; Ezra Pound was instrumental in the editorial arrangements, and Basil Bunting and
Kenneth Rexroth were also among the contributors. William Carlos Williams's theories
concerning the poem's status as an autonomous entity resulting from the relationship
between the perceiving consciousness and objective reality were of great significance in the
formulation of the Objectivists' tenets; Zukofsky wished to regard the poem as an ‘object in
process’, its images indissociable from a formal entirety that would not merely record events
but constitute a primary phenomenon of itself; he was insistent that the term ‘Objectivism’
should not be applied to his poetic theories in order to avoid confusion with the
philosophical meanings of the word. Objectivist verse was in part an attempt to
purge Imagism of affectations it was felt to have developed since its beginnings. An
‘Objectivists’ Anthology (1932) was published under Zukofsky's editorship by the press Oppen
had established at Le Beausset in France; the two then formed the Objectivist Press which
produced numerous valuable editions, including Williams's Collected Poems, 1921–1931 in
1934. The theories of the Objectivists and their use of innovative typographical procedures
anticipated important features of later American poetry, notably the Projective verse of
Charles Olson and his followers.
****We won't be reading Olson, but he looms large - he is important to the BLACK
MOUNTAIN SCHOOL OF POETRY --- Please open and take a brief look over his Projective
Verse manifesto...note the point above going in..."to regard the poem as an ‘object in
process’, its images indissociable from a formal entirety that would not merely record events
but constitute a primary phenomenon of
itself" http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237880 (please read the intro essay)
Lorine Neidecker
*****Selection of poems (1946)
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/niedecker/poems.html
On PennSound
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Niedecker.php
*****Intro to the Collected Poems of Lorine Neidecker by Jenny Penberthy
http://jacketmagazine.com/18/penb-nied.html
Bio of Lorine Niedecker
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lorine-niedecker
Charles Reznikoff
*****Testimony (1934)
https://signsoflife10.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/reznikoff-testimony.pdf
*****On Testimony
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/reznikoff/testimony.htm
“A Brutal American Epic” by Charles Simic
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2015/08/25/brutal-american-epic-reznikoff-testimony/
Bio of Charles Reznikoff
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-reznikoff
On PennSound
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Reznikoff.php
George Oppen
*****Of Being Numerous (1968) (IN FILES)
*****Or here: http://writing.upenn.edu/~taransky/of_being_numerous_1968_oppen.pdf
Listen to “Of Being Numerous” (scroll down)
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Oppen.php
*****“The Mind’s Own Place” by George Oppen (1963)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237882
*****“The Shipwreck of the Singular” by Marjorie Perloff
http://marjorieperloff.com/essays/oppen-numerous/
Bio of George Oppen
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-oppen
Assignment: Now - this was VERY MUCH material to get through, and it's fine if you only
made it part way. Over the weekend, what I want you to do is to re-read the below from
Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Then choose at least three of the poems you read
above (you won't be doing this until we discuss the material in class!) and contrast them to
points Wordsworth makes about what poetry is, could be, should be. Post to DISCUSSIONS.
"Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is meant by the word
Poet? What is a Poet? to whom does he address himself? and what language is to be
expected from him?—He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more
lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human
nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind;
a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in
the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as
manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he
does not find them. to these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than
other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself
passions, which are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet
(especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more
nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than anything which, from the motions
of their own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves:— whence, and
from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks
and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the
structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement....I have said
that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion
recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the
tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the
subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In
this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried
on; but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various causes, is
qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are
voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. If Nature be
thus cautious to preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet ought to
profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought especially to take care, that, whatever
passions he communicates to his Reader, those passions, if his Reader’s mind be sound and
vigorous, should always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of
harmonious metrical language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind association of
pleasure which has been previously received from works of rhyme or metre of the same or
similar construction, an indistinct perception perpetually renewed of language closely
resembling that of real life, and yet, in the circumstance of metre, differing from it so
widely—all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight, which is of the most
important use in tempering the painful feeling always found intermingled with powerful
descriptions of the deeper passions. This effect is always produced in pathetic and
impassioned poetry; while, in lighter compositions, the ease and gracefulness with which the
Poet manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a principal source of the gratification
of the Reader. All that it is necessary to say, however, upon this subject, may be effected by
affirming, what few persons will deny, that, of two descriptions, either of passions, manners,
or characters, each of them equally well executed, the one in prose and the other in verse,
the verse will be read a hundred times where the prose is read once."
ADVANCED EXTRA CREDIT --- Add to your discussion a reflection on Wordsworth's discussion
of the scientist to Imagism and Objectivism -- what might they share in common? (Keeping in
mind the radical shift in the understanding of the scientist's task from Wordsworth's time to
the early 1900's!)
6
Feb 2 T
If necessary, we will continue with Imagism and Objectivism before moving on to Stein!!! It's
important for us to have a good handle on these concepts before we attempt to make our
way through the text-objects she wrote and left for us to make our ways through....
Gertrude Stein
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (1933)
“If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso” by Gertrude Stein
(Both in SELECTED WRITINGS OF GERTRUDE STEIN)
Listen to Stein read “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Stein.html
Composition as Explanation by Gertrude Stein (1925)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/238702
On the "I" in Stein's "Portrait of Picasso"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9KPWaYSKPw
And a precocious kid reciting Stein by memory!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3geg3yopBP8
Stein is DIFFICULT! Don't worry if you feel, at first, entirely disoriented. Your disorientation is
part of Stein's agenda - not to simple trick you, but to cause you to pay greater attention to
language and the way it works. It's important to consider, more so than Imagism or
Objectivism, movements in the visual arts around Stein's times -- what one might call Modern
Visual Art.
You need to read up a little bit about Cubism:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cube/hd_cube.htm
Here's Marcel Duchamp's NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51449.html
and here's material on Picasso:
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-picasso-pablo.htm
http://www.pablopicasso.org/cubism.jsp
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pica/hd_pica.htm
Assignment: In Discussions: Consider Stein's portrait of Picasso in relationship to Picasso's
portraits. What properties of language is Stein putting to work in her textual cubism that
might NOT be available to a painter? What exactly might "textual cubism" be defined as -- in
terms of space, time, effects, form and content?
7
Feb 4 R
Gertrude Stein
Stein on "Loving Repeating"
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/stein-repeating.html
Stein on Narrative
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/stein-on-narrative.html
Stein on the Noun
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/stein-grammar.html
Stein on Composition
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/stein-composing.html
The Difference is Spreading: On Gertrude Stein
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/difference-spreading-gertrude-stein
Tender Buttons (1914)
(in SELECTED WRITINGS OF GERTRUDE STEIN)
ModPo discusses Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons," October 2, 2013 - Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rbn96WsVR0
ModPo discusses Gertrude Stein's "Tender Buttons," October 2, 2013 - Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jq1-vfk2bU
Isn't Stein's verse childish nonsense?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOg8duXVZoo
On Whether Close Reading Strategies Work for Stein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68woE9OsOwY
Making Tender Buttons by Joshua Schuster
http://jacket2.org/article/making-tender-buttons
Words as Objects by Lew Welch
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/welch/from_stein.html
“The Rejection of Closure” (1985) Lyn Hejinian
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237870
“Someone is Writing a Poem” (1983) Adrienne Rich
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/239326
Assignment: Choose one "tender button" and go wild doing a close reading -- look for word
play, the effect of repetition, the ways words influence each other....don't try to explain how
the poem relates to the object "titled" - just talk about the mechanics and play you see in the
poem itself. Then, choose one essay (either Lew Welch, Lyn Heijinian, or Adrienne Rich) and
relate that essay to the way in which Tender Buttons as a whole works.
8
Feb 9 T
William Carlos Williams
Spring and All by William Carlos Williams
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Buffalo.php
On Spring and All
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/spring.htm
“The Poem as A Field of Action” by William Carlos Williams (1948)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237854
Allen Ginsberg lecture on Williams March 17. 1988
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Ginsberg.php (scroll down)
Dialogue on Spring and All
http://htmlgiant.com/craft-notes/joe-wenderoth-colin-winnette-talk-wcws-spring-and-all/
Recordings of Williams reading his poems:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.php
Question: Would you prefer to read ONLY the poem from Spring and All or would you prefer
to read the mix of poems and prose? Why do you think you answer in the way that you
do? Williams, in a way, is a bridge between the Imagists and Objectivists and then /the
Beats/ and /the Confessionalists/, We will be plunging into some of the work of the Beats by
reading the work of Allen Ginsberg, but we won't really be reading much of the
Confessionalists....think back to the beginning of class --- Sharon Olds and, in part, Li-Young
Lee are descendants or disciples of the Confessionalists, though Lee is definitely also
influenced by his heritage and by surrealism. (You might want to go back to the beginning of
the syllabus to take a refresher peek.) Here's an important little overview of the
confessionalists....https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-confessional-poetry.
On the other hand, Williams is claimed as an ancestor for some of the more experimental
strains of later U.S. poetry, such as Language poetry - another movement we will be touching
on but not going deeply into depth....take a look
here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-language-poetry --- language poetry,
as you might guess, follows from Objectivism in some ways, but it also comes AFTER and in
part IN REACTION to the stable lyric self proliferating in confessional poetry (and Beat
Poetry!) - Language poets would assert that the self is created by the language one uses, that
the self can be manipulated into certain modes through propaganda, language, even
grammar. The goal of a language poet is to chisel at the authority of language itself to bring
it to a less coercive state.
Williams can be both an exhibitionist of the self -- leading to the confessionals - - as well he
can be a poet who pushes the reader to consider language as a medium and instrument
beyond content -- objectivist and onward into experimental and language poetry.
Assignment -- Open --- You can write a poem or you can write about a Williams passage
that attracted you attention or compare Williams to one or more of the poets we've read,
such as, I think importantly, Loy....What might have Williams have made of, thought of, Loy's
"Partuition?"
9
Feb 11 R
Juliana Spahr
We will be going to see Juliana Spahr read from her work -- if you can't make the
reading, let me know as soon as possible - you'll be able to substitute it for one of the
other readings noted below.
REREAD Lyric and Other People (IN FILES)
The Connection of Everyone With Lungs by Juliana Spahr
Review of The Connection of Everyone With Lungs
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Reviews/this_connection.html
“Notes Toward an Ecopoetics: Revising the Postmodern Sublime and Juliana Spahr’s This
Connection of Everyone with Lungs” by Christopher Arigo
https://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_2/ecopoetics/essays/arigo.html
On Experimental Poetry:
http://www.textetc.com/modernist/experimental-poetry.html
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO ATTEND:
Juliana Spahr’s Reading on Feb. 11th at 8:00 PM
in Temple University’s Center City Campus (Room 222)
1515 Market St.
Philadelphia PA 19102
215-204-8822
Assignment: 1) Report on the reading. 2) Is Spahr a lyric poet? An Experimental poet? Both?
Neither? How so, or why not? There isn't a "correct" answer, only thoughtful ones.
10
Mar 1 T
Emily Dickinson was little published during her lifetime -- unlike, say, Walt Whitman. Although
Dickinson wrote in the 1800's, her work did not become widely read until the 1920's, raising
the question of whether Dickinson was a kind of Modernist too soon -- How do the poems
that Howe discusses relate to the other Modernist poetry we've looked at? Is Dickinson a kind
of Modernist? Ultimately, categorization is not important, the work is. With "My Emily
Dickinson" you have the chance both to delve into Dickinson's poetry as well as the mind and
writing of the poet Susan Howe. If you have time (which you may not, as this is a difficult,
dense book), you might want to look online for examples of Howe's poetry. Howe might be
considered to be a feminist poet with influences emanating from experimental and Language
Poetry - history, for Howe, and the writing of history itself, is pivotal to her concerns, writing
and practice.
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/posthumous_publication
My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe (1985)
Reading “My Emily Dickinson” by Isabelle Alfandary
http://jacketmagazine.com/40/howe-s-alfandary.shtml
Susan Howe Talks about Emily Dickinson at KWH, March 2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBoETt9DmPI
Susan Howe reads from “My Emily Dickinson & Discusses With Poets”
http://jacket2.org/commentary/susan-howe-reads-my-emily-dickinson-discusses-poets
Assignment: Choose a several page chunk of text that confused and/or intrigued you and
put it into your own words.
11
Mar 3 R
Wallace Stevens
(IN FILES)
“The Plot Against the Giant”
"Domination of Black"
“The Snow Man”
“Fabliau of Florida”
"The Place of the Solitaires"
“Vincentine”
“The Emperor of Ice Cream”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/248396#poem
"Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock"
“Anecdote of the Jar”
"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"
“The Idea of Order at Key West”
“The Man with the Blue Guitar”
"The Poems of Our Climate"
“The Man on the Dump”
“Of Hartford in a Purple Light”
“Of Modern Poetry”
“The Auroras of Autumn”
“Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself”
“A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/11019
“Of Mere Being”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/249340
Stevens Reading from his Work – Please scan the page for poems listed above and listen.
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Stevens-Wallace.html
“The Emperor of Ice Cream: The Chilly Heart” by Austin Allen
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/248396#guide
“On The Emperor of Ice Cream”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/emperor.htm
“The Idea of Wallace Stevens: Key West”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audioitem/2832
“On The Idea of Order at Key West”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/keywest.htm
“On Anecdote of the Jar”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/jar.htm
“On Of Mere Being”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/mere.htm
Stevens’s Obituary
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Stevens/obit.html
it's like a new reality, man: On “Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself” (PoemTalk
#14)
http://poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com/2009/02/stevens.html
“Vagrancy in the Park” by Susan Howe19
http://www.thenation.com/article/vagrancy-in-the-park/
Assignment: Write a poem -- it need not be a "Stevens-esque" poem, but it should jump off
from one of his lines or phrases or words --- use his work as fuel to write your own short,
dense or open poem.
Extra Credit if you attend:
Thursday, March 10, 8:00 pm
Temple Center City Campus (1515 Market Street), room 222
SUSAN HOWE
12
Mar 15 T
Again, a week with much assigned. I'll put a **** beside the priority material that you should
consider first.
Claude McKay
****“If We Must Die” by Claude McKay
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173960
****On “If We Must Die”
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/mckay/mustdie.htm
Langston Hughes
****“Ask Your Mama” (IN FILES)
Madam Poems
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/62/6#!/20583560/0
Four Poems
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/69/5#!/20584954
"Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz" A Langston Hughes Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCKt9unnF0I
“Jessye Norman, the Roots Team Up for Langston Hughes’ ‘Ask Your Mama’”
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/jessye-norman-the-roots-team-up-for-langston-hughes-askyour-mama/
“Jazz as Communication” by Langston Hughes
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/237856
Langston Hughes Bio
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/langston-hughes
****Framing and Framed Languages in Hughes's Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz by R.
Baxter Miller (IN FILES)
Melvin B. Tolson
Melvin B. Tolson Selections
https://shannonsbooknook.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/the-poetry-of-melvin-b-tolson/
****From "Libretto for the Republic of Liberia"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/76/4#!/20591298
Rendezvous with America
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/245194
*****Reading from “Dark Symphony”
http://www.flashpointmag.com/mbtsymphonywmv.htm
Melvin B. Tolson Bio
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/melvin-b-tolson
The Poetry of Melvin B. Tolson (IN FILES)
Gertude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
*****Essay from Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (IN FILES)
Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYaQzMguAUM&list=PLR_Cki3xv0bhpku1lcmJzzz6j
k_MZwDq5 Ma Rainey “Deep Moaning Blues”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoZmWPb7r1o Ma Rainey “Trust No Man”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHa2GRozOms&list=PLguB2-oS9Kmt57-9gojkdt0sMsuPGBTM Bessie Smith “Down Hearted Blues”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAUfnWKE3Ts&list=PLguB2-oS9Kmt57-9gojkdt0sMsuPGBTM&index=14&spfreload=10 Young Woman’s Blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtqjW2uhBT4 Billie Holiday “Lady Sings the Blues”
“The Blue Century: Brief Notes on African-American Poetry” by Rowan Ricardo Phillips (IN
FILES)
“Sight Specific, Sound Specific…” by Nathaniel Mackey (2005)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/239324
Assignment: Choose any poem from the course thus far and create a marginal musical score
for it --- you can modify the poem, do anything you want, but I want you to create
something that a musical band and perhaps singer or speaker could pick up and perform. I
recommend sticking with Wallace Stevens, but I'm very very happy for you to go all the way
back to the first class to find the poem you want to use or anywhere in between. If you draw
it out - photograph it and upload that rather than text to DISCUSSIONS.
13
Mar 17 R
SUDDEN LEAP INTO THE CONTEMPORARY (on music, performance and the sonic potentials
of language)
Eunoia by Christian Bok
Scroll down to listen to Christian Bok reading from Eunoia:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Bok.php
Selections from Tracie Morris
http://bombmagazine.org/article/1627/two-poems
Scroll down to "Reading at Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, November 14,
2013" (or choose any)
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Morris.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUOUS6ju2hg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McZhS
GdcwV
Improvisational Insurrection: The Sound Poetry of Tracie Morris Author(s): Christine Hume (IN
FILES)
Selections from Terrance Hayes
“American Sonnet for Wanda C”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/251056
"God is an American" from LIGHTHEAD (IN FILES)
Bio:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/terrance-hayes
"How to Draw a Perfect Circle"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/249116
"What It Look Like"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/251054
"Mystic Bounce"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/181171
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/42
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/video/245
Selections from Eileen Myles
http://www.eileenmyles.com/sorrytree.php
Eileen Myles's Blog
http://lady-lyke.tumblr.com/

Smile at The Awl

The Perfect Faceless Fish at The Brooklyn Rail

Milk from Jacket

The Beach from DRC

Compassion from DRC

Waterfall from Tinfish

School of Fish from Dia Center of the Arts

Aurora from Valentine

Maxfield Parrish from Lingo, A Journal of the Arts
*******http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Myles.php
“When We’re Alone in Public: The Metabolic Work of Eileen Myles” by Maggie Nelson (IN
FILES)
Assignment: Report on your experience at either the Hayes reading or the Myles reading. Or
construct an Oulipohttps://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-oulipo experiment akin
to Eunoia (on a smaller scale!) and execute it.
Thursday, 3/17
BRAVE TESTIMONY: TERRANCE HAYES
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Sponsored annually by the Center for Africana Studies at Penn, the Brave Testimony
series celebrates poetry of the African Diaspora. Featured readers have included Nikky
Finney, Brenda Marie Osbey, Tracy K. Smith, and Kevin Young.
Terrance Hayes is the author of Lighthead (Penguin 2010), winner of the 2010 National Book
Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other books are Wind In a
Box (Penguin 2006), Hip Logic (Penguin 2002), and Muscular Music (Tia Chucha Press, 1999).
His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a
United States Artists Zell Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur
Fellowship. How To Be Drawn (Penguin 2015), his most recent collection of poems, was a
finalist for the 2015 National Book Award.
Monday, 3/21
EILEEN MYLES
Kelly Writers House Fellows Program
6:30 PM in the Arts Cafe
rsvp required: whfellow@writing.upenn.edu or (215) 573-9749
14
Mar 22 T
A Several World by Brian Blanchfield
(We will skype with the author in class - come with questions!)
"On Frottage"
http://harpers.org/archive/2015/11/theres-the-rub/
"On Dossiers"
http://bombmagazine.org/article/03981124/on-dossiers-permitting-shame-error-and-guiltmyself-the-single-source
No Assignment!
15
Mar 24 R
Howl by Allen Ginsberg
Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg
Selections from “Mexico City Blues” and “The Subterraneans” by Jack Keruoac
“Missing Beats: Marginalized Women of The Beat Generation” by Jessica Farrugia
http://the-artifice.com/beat-generation-women/
Selections from Diane Di Prima
“Three Laments”
http://fuckyeahbeatpoets.tumblr.com/post/4904757913/three-laments-by-diane-di-prima
Assignment -- Relate HOWL and KADDISH to Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent."Or
write your own beat poem.
16
Mar 29 T Myth, History and The Sex of Poetics
***“Laugh of The Medusa” by Helene Cixous (IN FILES)
****“A Woman Is Talking To Death” by Judy Grahn (IN FILES)
http://www.deepoakland.org/UserFiles/Image/Grahn_Womanis.pdf
*****Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
“Feminism and the Female Poet” by Lynn Keller and Cristianne Miller (IN FILES)
*****“Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythology” by Alicia Ostriker
http://ccurley.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/87703807/The%20Thieves%20of%20Language%20Wo
men%20Poets%20and%20Revision.pdf
"The Poetics of Disobedience" by Alice Notley
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/238698
*****excerpt from "My Life" by Lyn Hejinian
"Some Notes on the Origin of the Term 'Gurlesque'" by Arielle Greenberg 2009
"Theory of the Gurlesque" by Laura Glenum 2009
Assignment --- Post notes on your experience reading Autobiography of Red in relationship
to the Ostriker essay. OR post notes on your experience reading the Judy Grahn poem. OR
write an imitation of "My Life."
Or write a "gurlesque" poem.
17
Mar 31 R
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara
“Personism: A Manifesto” by Frank O’Hara (1961)
http://genius.com/Frank-ohara-personism-a-manifesto-annotated/
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/okay-ill-call-you-yes-call-me-frank-oharas-personism
Close read the poems in LUNCH POEMS.
Choose two or three to walk us through in class.
Assignment: Close read - word by word - one of the poems in Lunch Poems --- basically
write a sentence or two about each few words or each line.
18
Apr 5 T
“In Memory of My Feelings” by Frank O’Hara (IN FILES)
Selections from COLLECTED POEMS by Frank O’Hara (IN FILES)
“Queer Cities” by Maria Damon (IN FILES)
“Getting Particular: Gender at Play in the Work of John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, and James
Schuyler” by Maggie Nelson (IN FILES)
“Abstract Practices: The Art of Joan Mitchell, Barbara Guest, and Their Others” by Maggie
Nelson (IN FILES)
Selections by John Ashbery (in FILES)
Selections by Barbara Guest (in FILES)
“Invisible Architecture”
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/238690
“Twentieth-century Poetry and the New York Arts Scene” by Brian M. Reed (IN FILES)
“Painting, Poetry, and the Difficulty of Barbara Guest” by Carolyn Williamson
http://jacketmagazine.com/36/guest-williamson.shtml
“The Other Window Is a Lark” by Rachel Blau DuPlessis
http://jacketmagazine.com/36/guest-duplessis.shtml
No Assignment
Tuesday, 4/5
ANNA MARIA HONG AND JASON ZUZGA
A Creative Writing program poetry reading
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Anna Maria Hong is the winner of the 2014 Clarissa Dalloway Prize from the A Room of Her
Own Foundation for her novella H & G. A former Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for
Advanced Study and the recipient of Poetry magazine’s 2013 Frederick Bock Prize, she has
stories and poems recently appearing in The Iowa Review, Boston Review, The
Nation, Harvard Review,Conduit, Great River Review, China Grove, Fence, Bone Bouquet, The
Volta, Verse Daily, Drunken Boat, Green Mountains Review,Unsplendid, Southwest Review, 250
Poems, Best New Poets, and The Best American Poetry. A Contributing Editor at The Offing,
she teaches creative writing at Ursinus College, where she is the Visiting Creative Writer, and
at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Her chapbook Hello, virtuoso! was published by the
Belladonna* Collaborative.
Jason Zuzga was born in Camden, NJ, in 1972 and grew up in Cherry Hill. During a year off
from college, he interned at the Ecco Press, lived in Montreal, sailed on a tall ship, did
marine biological research, and drove a horse-drawn carriage around Independence Hall.
After college, he lived in New York City, where he was employed in a number of publishing
jobs. He completed an MFA in poetry and nonfiction at the University of Arizona and has
been awarded residential fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the
James Merrill House. His work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Paris Review, and Tin
House, among many other publications. He is currently a graduate student at the University
of Pennsylvania, working on a dissertation about nature documentary and media. He is the
Other/Nonfiction Co-Editor of FENCE. His book of poetry, HEAT WAKE, will be published by
Saturnalia Books in March 2016.
19
Apr 7 R
Ethnopoetics --- Note the years in which this project begins -- the time differential is
much greater than in the publication of Emily Dickinson, but there is the emergence of a
strong movement - from anthropology, from rights gained by Indigenous Americans -to make their own literature available. The biggest question here is how to translate not
only across languages but across media - in many cases from dance, song, performance,
ritual, to the written word and page.
Ethnopoetics (defintion):
(1) A comparative approach to poetry and related arts, with a characteristic but not exclusive
emphasis on stateless, low-technology cultures and on oral and nonliterate [nonliteral] forms
of verbal expression. (2) The poetry and ideas about poetry in the cultures so observed or
studied. (3) A movement or tendency in contemporary poetry, literature, and social science
(anthropology in particular) devoted to such interests.
The history of such an ethnopoetics covers at least the last 200 years, during which time it
has functioned as a questioning of the culturally bounded poetics and poetry of "high
European culture." While the designation "ethnopoetics" is a much later coinage, the
interrogation has been carried forward in sometimes separated, sometimes interlocking
discourses among philosophers, scholars, poets, and artists. It is clearly linked with impulses
toward primitivism in both romanticism and modernism and with avant-garde tendencies to
explore new and alternative forms of poetry and to subvert normative views of traditional
values and the claims of "civilization" to hegemony over other forms of culture. Yet for all its
avant-gardism, the principal ethnopoetic concern has been with classical, even hieratic forms,
with fully realized, often long preserved traditions.
The emergence in the later 20th century of ethnopoetics as both a poetry movement and a
field of scholarly study was the culmination of projects that arose within modernism itself. In
that sense, ethnopoetics clearly paralleled the ethnoaesthetic concerns in the visual and
performative arts with their well-documented influence on the form and content of
contemporary art both in the West and in third-world cultures under European domination. In
turn, the growing restiveness of the Western avant-garde allowed a contemporary viewing of
culturally distant forms that revealed both those that resembled familiar Western forms and
others drawn from previously unrecognized areas of visual and verbal art. The interests of
poets — both formal and ideological — were accompanied or bolstered by scholarly
investigations of the contexts and linguistic properties of the traditional works, including the
nature of oral poetics and the particularities of translation from oral sources. Like much
modern and postmodern poetry and art, these investigations involved a necessarily
intermedial point of view, calling genre boundaries into question . … [From J.R., entry on
"ethnopoetics" in The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , 1993]
*****Selections from SHAKING THE PUMPKIN (IN FILES)
******http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/mayan_women_incanatations.pdf
******http://www.ubu.com/ethno/soundings/inuit.html
******http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/rothenberg_total.html
******http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/rothenberg_millennium.html
Barbara Tedlock Lecture: The Hidden Female Shaman Tradition (1:06:52): MP3
***** Cecilia Vicuña - Complete Reading, intro Barbara Cole (47:52): MP3
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/index.html
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses.html
try reading if you have further time
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses/rexroth_indian.html
more selections from
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/index.html
http://www.ubu.com/ethno/discourses.html
in FILES under Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
read entries on
American Indian Poetics and Ethnopoetics
and just think back to Olson, projective verse, and consider the Black Mountain School and
their influence and relation here.
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/brief-guide-black-mountain-school
http://pdrjournal.org/olson_feature
Assignment: Describe in detail one of your favorite poems from SHAKING THE PUMPKIN
using one of the secondary sources for support.
20
Apr 12 T Mysticism and Science
Selections from Jack Spicer from After Lorca
Selection from Ronald Johnson from ARK (IN FILES)
“Poets and Scientists” by Peter Middleton (IN FILES)
“Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject” by Marjorie Perloff
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/langpo.html
Vancouver Lectures: from "Dictation and 'A Textbook of Poetry'" by Jack Spicer (1965)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/238196?page=1 (note there are 5 pages—
you need to click through the whole document)
“Manifest Aversions, Conceptual Conundrums, & Implausibly Deniable Links by Charles
Bernstein (2009)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/182839
“The Right to Manifest Manifesto” by CA Conrad (2012)
https://www.poet
s.org/poetsorg/text/right-manifest-manifesto
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/somatic-poetics-interview-caconrad
Assignment: Write a poem of any of the sciences using one of the sets of exercises
listed here:
Charles Bernstein “Wreading” Experiments
http://writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/wreading-experiments.html
Bernadette Mayer Writing Excercises
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html
CAConrad somatic poetry excercises
http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/
http://writing.upenn.edu/~taransky/somatic-exercises.pdf
Tuesday, 4/12
CHARLES BERNSTEIN: PITCH OF POETRY BOOK LAUNCH
6:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
Pitch of Poetry (just out from University of Chicago Press) is Charles Bernstein's irreverent
guide to modernist and contemporary poetics. Subjects range across Holocaust
representation, Occupy Wall Street, and the figurative nature of abstract art. Detailed
overviews of formally inventive work include essays on—or “pitches” for—a set of key poets,
from Gertrude Stein and Robert Creeley to John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Larry Eigner, and
Leslie Scalapino. Bernstein also reveals the formative ideas behind the
magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. The final section, published here for the first time, is a
sweeping work on the poetics of stigma, perversity, and disability that is rooted in the
thinking of Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William Blake. Pitch
of Poetry makes an exhilarating case for what Bernstein calls echopoetics: a poetry of call and
response, reason and imagination, disfiguration and refiguration.
Bernstein is the Donald T. Regan professor of English and Comparative Literature at Penn,
where he co-directs PennSound with Al Filries. Along with Pitch of Poetry, his other books
from the University of Chicago Press include Recalculating and Attack of the Difficult Poems.
21
Apr 14 R
Loss and Lament At The Margins
TEA by D.A. Powell
“D.A. Powell’s Unruly Elegies” by Christopher Richards
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/d-a-powell-poetry
ROOMS ARE NEVER FINISHED by Agha Shahid Ali
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/agha-shahid-ali
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/240200#guide
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/guide/240200#poem
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Buffalo.php
(March 10, 1994)
ZONG! By M. NourbeSe Philip (IN FILES)
“Reading M. NourbeSe Philip's 'Zong!'” by Fred Wah
http://jacket2.org/article/reading-m-nourbese-philips-zong
Assignment: Discuss at least two different poems by two different authors from today's
materials.
Thursday, 4/21
PATRICIA SPEARS JONES
Eva and Leo Sussman Poetry program
7:00 PM in the Arts Cafe
introduced by: Charles Bernstein
Arkansas born and raised, resident of New York City for more than three decades, Patricia
Spears Jones was named by Essence.com as one of its “40 Poets They Love” in 2010. She is
author of the poetry collections Painkiller and Femme du Mondefrom Tia Chucha Press
and The Weather That Kills from Coffee House Press and five chapbooks including Living in
the Love Economy. Her fourth full collection of poetry A Lucent Fire: New and Selected
Poems is out from White Pine Press (White Pine Press Distinguished Poets series). Her work is
widely anthologized. Spears Jones has been a culture maven for four decades. She was the
first African American programmer as Program Coordinator at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s
Church where two decades later she served as Mentor for Emerge, Surface, Be, a new
fellowship program. She ran the esteemed New Works Program for the Massachusetts
Council of Arts and Humanities (1989-1991) and was Director of Planning and Development
at The New Museum of Contemporary Art (1994-96). She is also actively involved in a variety
of formal and informal organizations involved with progressive politics, social justice,
feminism, the environment, and multi-culturalism, best seen in her appointment as Senior
Fellow for The Black Earth Institute. She curates WORDS SUNDAY, a literary and performance
series focused on Brooklyn based writers and artists. She teaches for CUNY.
22
Apr 19 T
Selections from Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (in Files)
Try at least to make your way in part through the two starred articles below.
A COMMENTARY ON THERESA HAK KYUNG CHA’S DICTÉE by Michael Stone-Richards (in
Files)
****"Suspicious Characters: Realism, Asian American Identity, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's
"Dictee" by Sue-Im Lee (in FIles)
"Memory and Anti-Documentary Desire in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée" by Anne Anlin
Cheng (in Files)
******"Postmodernism, Readers, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's "Dictee" by Juliana M. Spahr
Selections from Arthur Sze
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/arthur-sze
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/arthur-sze#about
(please read all materials on the "about" page)
Selections from Bhanu Kapil (in Files)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bhanu-kapil
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/236782
Selections from Myung Mi Kim (in Files)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/myung-mi-kim
Selections from Cathy Park Hong
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/cathy-park-hong
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/cathy-park-hong#about
(please read all materials on the "about" page at least the poems and "How Words Fail"
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178505)
~~~~~~
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/08/white-poet-chinese-pen-name-bestamerican-poetry-2015
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/14/real-actual-asian-poets-best-americanpoetry-michael-derrick-hudson
http://lithub.com/actual-asian-poets/
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-white-poets-pretend-to-be-asian
Skype from Ken Chen of Asian American Writer's Workshop (tentative)
Assignment: Write about your own voice as a writer. Who are you? And how does what you
articulate in the written word or spoken word determine your answer or rather is informed by
your answer? er.
23
Apr 21 R
Trans* Voices
Selections from the anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and
Poetics IN FILES
Gephyromania by TC Tolbert (selections) IN FILES
Interview with TC Tolbert
http://www.nomadicground.com/caconradnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbsp
nbspnbspnbspnbspnbsp-editor/interview-with-poet-tc-tolbert
Gowanus Atropolis by Julian Brolaski (selections) IN FILES
“The Father, The Son, and The Holy Drag Queen” by Andy Emitt
http://lunalunamag.com/2015/05/15/poetry-of-rupauls-drag-race-season-7-ep-10/
HANDOUT FINAL EXAM
24
Apr 26 T
Blackacre by Monica Youn (manuscript of book to be published in the fall In FILES)
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/06/on-blackacre/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/250438
FINAL EXAM DUE LAST DAY OF FINALS