8/29: The Context for Modernism -- Industrial Revolution, Freudian Psychology, Impressionism in painting, Romantic and Victorian poetry. Dickinson. Whitman.

8/31:

Reading--Whitman, introduction to Leaves of Grass.
"Song of Myself." sections 1, 5, 6, 7, 14, 20, 24, 31, 43, 48, 51, 52
Whitman in the American tradition--Ginsberg, McGrath, C.K. Williams
Whitman video

Two

9/5:

Assigned reading--"Early Modernism--Historical and Critical Overview" (82-97)
Lecture on Early Modernism, including Pound
Look at Olson, "Projective Verse" in American Poetics
Look at definition of "Objectivism" from Zukofsky in American Poetics
Read poems by e. e. cummings, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams

9/7:

Assigned reading--Gertrude Stein, Introduction
T. S. Eliot, introduction, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and The Waste Land
Look at/discuss the dramatic monolgue--Browning's "The Last Duchess?"
William Carlos Williams, introduction, "Portrait of a Lady," "Spring and All," "The Right of Way," "The Red Wheelbarrow," "This is Just to Say."
Review of terms from this class period: alliteration, assonance, slant rhyme, the foot (iamb, dactyl, strophee, etc.), enjambment--all in discussion of form in free verse. While free verse doesn't adhere to any predetermined pattern of meter or rhyme, it possesses qualities of meter and rhyme. Each free verse poem invents its own form.

Three

9/12:

Intro Wallace Stevens--assign "The Snow Man," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," and "Of Modern Poetry"
Intro Amy Lowell--assign "Patterns"
Finish Eliot: "The Waste Land" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Assign Essay One

9/14:

Michelle Noteboom, Edging--read "Lost" (3), "The Edge" (7), "The Edge" (11), "4 P.M." (14), "The Edge" (16), "The Edge" (21), "Covert" (25), "The Edge" (28), "Cement" (34), "The Edge" (37), "Grasp" (40), "The Edge" (42), "Archaeology" (45), "Chrysalis" (50), "The Edge" (61), "Epilogue" (67), "Notes" (69).

Four

Monday, 9/18: required attendance at Michelle Noteboom's reading. 7 PM, FAC Recital Hall

9/19:

Meeting with Michelle Noteboom
Discuss poems

9/21:

Assigned reading: Ezra Pound, "A Retrospect," pp. 63-71 of Twentieth Century Poetics
In-class work on Essay One (please bring electronic copy of your essay)

Five

9/26:

Essay One due
Mid-Century Poets: "Historical and Critical Overview"
Theodore Roethke, "My Father's Waltz" and "Root Cellar"
Elizabeth Bishop: "In the Waiting Room," "The Moose," "One Art."
Randall Jarrell: "Losses," "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
William Stafford: "Traveling through Dark"
Robert Lowell: "Skunk Hour"

9/28

Mid-Century Poets
Robert Hayden, "Those Winter Sundays"
Thomas McGrath, "The Buffalo Coat"
Assign presentation

Six

10/3

Open Form
Lorine Niedecker, "The Element Mother," "Sorrow Moves in Wide Waves"
Denise Levertov "The Ache of Marriage," "Our Bodies"
A. R. Ammons "Gravelly Run"
Robert Creeley "I Know a Man"
Gary Snyder "Riprap," "Axe Handles"

10/5

Open Form continued
Charles Olson, "Projective Verse" (in the Poetics book), intro and part 1.

Seven

10/10

Prep day for presentations

10/12:

Presentations

Eight

10/17

Hand out midterm exam

10/19

Work on midterm exam--exam due at end of hour.

Nine

10/24

The Beats
Kenneth Rexroth, biography and "A Very Early Morning Exercise"
Gary Snyder, biography and "Axe Handles"
Allen Ginsberg, biography, "America," "A Supermarket in California," and "Howl"
Denise Levertov, "Some Notes on Organic Form" (in Poetics)

10/26

Beat Generation cd
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, bio and "In Goya's Greatest Scenes We seem to See"
A. R. Ammons, bio and "Gravelly Run," "The City Limits," "The Constant"

Ten

10/31

Lyn Hejinian, "The Rejection of Closure" in Poetics
Deborah Bernhardt, Echolalia through page 23

11/2

Echolalia through end

Eleven

11/7

Deborah Bernhardt in class
7:30 PM -- required attendance at Deborah Bernhardt reading, in the FAC Recital Hall

11/9

Robert Bly--bio, poems, & overview of essay, "A Wrong Turning in American Poetry."
John Ashbery, Intro and "My Erotic Double," "Paradoxes and Oxymorons," "At North Farm"
New Poets Essay

Twelve

11/14

Poems from Juliet Patterson's The Truant Lover--"Note," "Prayer for Lorine Neidecker," and "Hand Inside" (1-7); "A Narrative" (13); "The Rim" and "Self Portraits (After Francesca Woodman)" (18-26); "From the Velocities" (39), "45 RPM" (40), "New Year's Eve," (43), "Stolen from a Branch" (70).
Article on Francesca Woodman

11/16: Juliet Patterson visits class

Required attendance at Juliet Patterson's reading: 7:00 PM at The Pump House at the corner of King and Front Street in downtown La Crosse.

Thirteen

11/21:

Sylvia Plath: intro, "Ariel" (handout), and "Lady Lazarus"
Richard Wilbur: "Love Calls Us to the Things of This World";
James Wright: "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio," and "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota"

11/23: Thanksgiving

Fourteen

11/28

Intro students to "Hard to Say."
Discuss English 312
Amiri Baraka/LeRoir Jones: Intro and "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" and "Legacy"
Lucille Clifton: Intro and "good times," "homage to my hips" and "to my last period"
Ted Kooser: Intro and "Abandoned Farmhouse," "Tom Ball's Barn," and "Spring Plowing."

11/30

Robert Pinsky: Intro and "Shirt"
Billy Collins: Intro, "Lowell, Mass." and "The Dead"
Robert Hass: Intro and "Meditation at Lagunitas"
Lyn Hejinian: Intro and "From My Life" and "It was only a coincidence";

Fifteen

12/5

Yusef Komunyakaa: Intro and "Facing It"
Carolyn Forche: Intro and "The Colonel"
Adrian C. Louis: Intro and "Without Words," and "Looking for Judas"
Jorie Graham: Intro and "Mind," and "Erosion"

12/7: New poets essay and Anthology project due. Hand out final exam

Final Exam:

Tuesday, December 12th: 7:40 - 9:40 AM

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