Alex E. Blazer	Course Site	Syllabus
Links	Listserv	Treasure Hunt
Reading Journal	Criticism
Exam Review	Group Project	Final Paper

Assignments

"only one man—like a city"

English 260C (08198-8): Introduction to Poetry

Autumn 2002, TR 11:30-1:18 PM, Denney Hall 343

Poet Links

The following annotated links were compiled by the Autumn 2002 Introduction to Poetry class.

• William Shakespeare
  Bartleby.com | Eserver.org: Accessible Writing | Project Gutenberg: Shakespeare's complete sonnets online [AEB]
  Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet: An authoritative page with numerous biographies, critical works, study guides, biobliographies, and links devoted to the Bard [AEB]
  A Note on Shakespeare's Sonnets: Instructor Ian Johnston's study notes to his students [Rachel Pelphrey]
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  Chadwyck-Healey Individual Literature Collection: English Poetry (600-1900): Full text of Coleridge's poetry [AEB]
  Island of Freedom: Offers a brief biography of Coleridge as well as links to "friendly" criticism, Coleridge's complete works, and pages on other canonical poets [Anna Matisak]
  Samuel Taylor Coleridge Biography: In this concise biography of the life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, it is interesting to note the addiction to opium that burdened him and the void created in his childhood. He was a romantic poet with a less than poetic life. [Roger P. Sansuchat]
  Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poetry Archive: This website from the University of Virginia Libraries' Electronic Text Center provides a variety of Coleridge's poems online with useful footnotes [Anna Matisak]
• John Keats
  

  Chadwyck-Healey Individual Literature Collection: English Poetry (600-1900): Full text of Keat's poetry [AEB]
  John Keats: Keats' fan Jon Nylander offers a biography as well as selected sample analyses of Keats' poetry [Nicole Kidston]
  John Keats, Romantic Poet: A slight page but with two good links to Keats on the web—Project Bartleby and the British Library [Rachel Pelphrey]
  Introduction to Keats: CUNY Brooklyn instructor Lilia Melani's course website devoted to Keats includes study notes and an analysis of "Ode on Melancholy" [Rachel Pelphrey]
  Step-by-Step Method of Thoroughly Explicating a Poem: San José State University lecture Janice E. Patten's methodology for reading a poem includes an in-depth exploration of "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" [Nicole Kidston]

• Friedrich Hölderlin
  Friedrich Hölderlin: From Pegasos: A Literature Related Resource Site, offers a biography of the poet. [Julie Sanzone]
  Friedrich Hölderlin: From Mythos & Logos, home page of Brent Dean Robbins dedicated to the promotion of existential-phenomenological philosophy and psychology, offers biographies of Hölderlin as well as selected essays on the poet [AEB]
• Emily Dickinson
  Emily Dickinson: From the Academy of American Poets, provides a biography, bibliography, and sample poems [Katie Kinzig]
  Emily Dickinson: From AmericanPoems.com, compiles Dickinson's complete poems. [Adeel Karim]
  Emily Dickinson: From the Modern American Poetry Site, provides excerpts of scholarly readings on numerous Dickinson poems [Laura Duplain]
• William Butler Yeats
  William Butler Yeats: From the Academy of American Poets, provides a biography, poems, and links to criticical overview [AEB]
  William Butler Yeats: From the Internet Poetry Address Book, provides numerous biographies and links to Yeats poems [Katelyn Pivoriunas]
  The William Butler Yeats Collection: From Chadwyck-Healey, Yeats' complete opus, including poetry, plays, and essays. [AEB]
• Langston Hughes
  Langston Hughes: From the Academy of American Poets, provides a biography, poems, and links to critical overview [Adeel Karim]
  Twentieth-Century American Poetry: From Chadwyck-Healey, offers Hughes collected poetry [AEB]
  Langston Hughes: From the Modern American Poetry Site, provides excerpts of scholarly readings on numerous Hughes poems [Adeel Karim]
  The Langston Hughes Tribute: Christopher Kamsler's page includes a list of Hughes writing, selected poems, and links [Anna Matisak]
• Wallace Stevens
  Twentieth-Century American Poetry: From Chadwyck-Healey, offers full text of Stevens poems [AEB]
  Wallace Stevens: From Chadwyck-Healey, offers Steven's collected poetry [AEB]
  Wallace Stevens: A University of Pennsylvania's Stevens link page [Nicole Kidston]
  Wallace Stevens Resources: A student project from a modern American poetry course at Milikin University, this site offers biographical information, hints about Stevens basic themes, and a good links to journals about other poems [Nicole Kidston]
• George Oppen
  "A Language of the City": This article by Joseph Noble in the journal Aufgabe provides a reading of Oppen's "A Language of New York" [Julie Sanzone]
  George Oppen: From the Academy of American Poets, provides a summary of Oppen's life and a description of the Objectivist movement [Julie Sanzone]
  George Oppen: From the Modern American Poetry Site, provides a good summary of Oppen's life as well as excerpts of critical readings[Amber Meyers]
• Anne Sexton
  Twentieth-Century American Poetry: From Chadwyck-Healey, offers full text of Sexton's poems [AEB]
  Anne Sexton: From the Academy of American Poets, provides a biography, bibliography, and Sexton reading her work [Courtney Jacobs]
• John Ashbery
  John Ashbery: From the Electronic Poetry Corner, provides poems, interviews, and short reviews [Meghan Quinn and Matt Stewart]
  John Ashbery: From the Modern American Poetry Site, provides a biography and excerpted criticism [Meghan Quinn and Matt Stewart]
  
• Fanny Howe
  Fanny Howe: From the Academy of American Poets, provides a brief bio, photos and selected works (bio, photos, selected works) [Amber Meyers and Kate Pivoriunas]
  Fanny Howe, Selected Poems: From the University of California Press, provides the first "chapter" of Howe's Selected Poems [Kate Pivoriunas]
  
• William Carlos William
  Twentieth-Century American Poetry: From Chadwyck-Healey, offers full text of Williams poems [AEB]
  William Carlos Williams: From the Literary Kicks page by Levi Asher, provides a short biography of the poet and a short description of Paterson [Sarah Heintz]
  William Carlos Williams: From the Modern American Poetry Site, provides a biography, sample poems, and critical excerpts [AEB]

Listserv Response Sign-Up

These listserv responses serve three goals:

 

1) to compel you to actively read these poems

2) to help your peers understand these poems even as they're reading them

3) to broach issues for class discussion

 

Sign up for two slots, but please make sure the poets are at least three weeks apart.  In your post, be sure to respond to the correct material.  Once you've signed up for a slot, choose one of the poems to analyze closely in your response (if the poem is incredibly short, you may respond to more).  If applicable and appropriate, attempt to focus your response on an element of poetry as presented in class.  Use the response as an opportunity to develop a preliminary interpretation of the poem as well as steer class discussion in the direction of issues you want to work with.  These papers are informal, thus need not be polished; however, they should be fully engaged with the ideas and themes of the individual poem. Conclude your response with questions for class discussion and a link to and brief description of a useful website on the poet (using the research strategies illustrated in class). Your annotated link will be added to the course website. You will be responsible to perform the poem (or a large chunk of it) in class.

 

Submit your response to the listserv, listserv-blazer@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu,  no later than 12PM on the the Saturday before the poet is to be discussed in class.  This is especially important for your peers and I, who base class discussion on your responses, need time to read your post.  Responses will be penalized one letter grade for each day late; responses turned in on the day the poems are to be discussed in class will receive an "E".  As this policy will be strictly enforced, I suggest submitting your response to the listserv well in advance of the deadline in order to make sure it goes through and your peers and I have the benefit of your reflection as we read the poems. Finally, because we have differing operating systems and software, please refrain from sending attachments.

 

For example, if you sign your name in the box beside the box containing Friedrich Hölderlin's "Voice of the People," "Chiron," "Germania, and "The Only One," your response, which you would submit to the course listserv by 12 PM Saturday, October 5, should include 1) 250 words of close reading of one of those poems, 2) 2-3 questions for class discussion, 3) a link to and brief description of an authoritative website devoted to giving interpretation and biography of Hölderlin.

 

Week 2 (due 9-28)	William Shakespeare       [My love is strengthen'd, though more weak...] Le Andre' Boone       [When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd]       [That time of year thou mayest in me behold]       [Not marble, nor the gilded monuments]       [Let me not to the marriage of true minds] Rachel Pelphrey       [My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun]       [Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art]       [When my love swears that she is made of truth]       [My love is as a fever, longing still]   Samuel Taylor Coleridge       Kubla Khan         The Eolian Harp       Frost at Midnight       Limbo       Epitaph Roger Sansuchat       Dejection: An Ode       Reality's Dark Dream       The Pains of Sleep       Human Life Anna Matisak
Week 3 (due 10-5)	John Keats       Ode on Melancholy Rachel Pelphrey       On First Looking into Chapman's Homer       When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be]       To Sleep       Ode on a Grecian Urn Nicole Kidston       To Autumn       Ode to a Nightingale       Ode to Psyche       [Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell:] Jeremy S. Goldstein Friedrich Hölderlin       The Poet's Vocation Julie Sanzone       Voice of the People       Chiron       Germania       The Only One         Remembrance       Mnemosyne       [The fruits are ripe, dipped in fire, cooked]       [We set out from the abyss]
Week 4 (due 10-12)	Emily Dickinson       448 [This was a Poet! It is that] Adeel Karim       279 [Tie the Strings to my Life, My Lord,]       280 [I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,]       341 [After great pain, a formal feeling comes—]       443 [I tie my Hat I crease my Shawl—] Laura Duplain       640 [I cannot live with You—]       712 [Because I could not stop for Death—]       721 [Behind Me dips Eternity—]       1263 [There is No Frigate like a Book] Kathleen Kinzig William Butler Yeats       The Circus Animals' Desertion Jeremy S. Goldstein       The Lake Isle of Innisfree       Adam's Curse       The Wild Swans at Coole       The Second Coming         Leda and the Swan       Sailing to Byzantium       Among School Children       Byzantium Katelyn Pivoriunas
Week 5 (due 10-19)	Langston Hughes       Harlem Roger Sansuchat       The Negro Speaks of Rivers       Negro       Mother to Son       Dream Variations Adeel Karim       The Weary Blues       I, Too       Mulatto       Freedom [aka Democracy in Meyers' text] Anna Matisak Wallace Stevens       Of Modern Poetry James Stewart       The Snow Man       The Emperor of Ice-Cream       Anecdote of the Jar       Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird         The Idea of Order at Key West       The Man on the Dump       Man Carrying Thing       Not Ideas about the Thing But the Thing Itself Nicole Kidston
Week 6 (due 10-26)	George Oppen       The Poem         Image of the Engine       The Crowded Counters of the Bomb       To Memory       Five Poems about Poetry Amber Meyers       A Language of New York       The Building of the Skyscraper       World, World—       The Lighthouses Julie Sanzone Anne Sexton       The Silence Andi Carty       Said the Poet to the Analyst       The Truth the Dead Know       All My Pretty Ones       The Starry Night Sarah Heintz Courtney Jacobs       Wanting to Die       The Other       Baby Picture       The Poet of Ignorance
Week 7	Midterm Exam No Listserv Responses Due
Week 8 (due 11-9)	John Ashbery       Paradoxes and Oxymorons Meghan Quinn       The Instruction Manuel       The Young Son       These Lacustrine Cities       Forties Flick James Stewart       Hop o' My Thumb       The One Thing That Can Save America       Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror       Daffy Duck in Hollywood Andi Carty Courtney Jacobs Fanny Howe       Splinter Le Andre' Boone       [Amber is a fossilized resin, yellow]       [Flamingo pink on the chimney stacks]       [Love's body and mouth lie down together]       [Sex is made on a bed which is too loose] Amber Meyers       [Zero built a nest]       [Into the forest I went walking to get lost.]       [Nuns, monks and swamis]       [The neo-neolithic urban nomad school...] Katelyn Pivoriunas
Week 9 (due 11-16)	William Carlos Williams       Paterson, Book I, Part I Kathleen Kinzig             Book I, Part II   Laura Duplain             Book I, Part III   Sarah Heintz       Paterson, Book II, Part I   Meghan Quinn             Book II, Part II                 Book II, Part III
Week 10	Group Presentations No Listserv Responses Due
Week 11	Group Presenations No Listserv Responses Due
Finals Week	Final Paper No Listserv Responses Due

Poetry Database Treasure Hunt

Using the online poetry resources exemplified in class, answer the following questions.

1. What is the etymology of the word "poet" and to whom was the word first applied in English?
   
2. Where and when was contemporary American poet Lyn Hejinian born?
3. What 17th century English poem's first line is "'Twas on a lofty vase's side"?
   
4. What (real) audio clips of contemporary American poet Bruce Andrews reading his poetry are available on the web?
   
5. Where can one find a few selected poems by modern poet Allen Ginsberg online?
   
6. What website features video of National Poetry Slam Y2K?
   
7. What is an epithalamium?  Name a poem that exemplifies it and name a poem that parodies it.
   
8. Which William Butler Yeats' poems use the word "gyre"?
   
9. In what year were poets first honored on United States postage stamps?
   
10. Who said, "Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun"?
    

Answers

1. What is the etymology of the word "poet" and to whom was the word first applied in English?
       Use: Oxford English Dictionary
       Answer: "maker/creator"
           Homer
   
2. Where and when was contemporary American poet Lyn Hejinian born?
       Use: Academy of American Poets
       Answer: San Francisco Bay area
           1941
   
3. What 17th century English poem's first line is "'Twas on a lofty vase's side"?
       Use: English Poetry Database
       Answer: Thomas Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes"
   
4. What (real) audio clips of contemporary American poet Bruce Andrews reading his poetry are available on the web?
       Use: Electronic Poetry Corner
       Answer: "Crease"
           "Linebreak Program"
           "I Knew the Signs by Their Tents"
   
5. Where can one find a few selected poems by modern poet Allen Ginsberg online?
       Use: Modern American Poetry Site (many other sites offer poetry selections as well)
   
6. What website features video of National Poetry Slam Y2K?
       Use: About.com: Contemporary Poetry, Video subsection
       Answer: www.livepoets.com
   
7. What is an epithalamium?  Name a poem that exemplifies it and name a poem that parodies it.
       Use: About.com: Contemporary Poetry, General Reference subsection,
           Glossary of Poetry Terms by Bob's Byway
       Answer: A song or poem honoring marriage.
           Spenser's "Epithalamion" exemplifies;
           Sir John Suckling's "A Ballad upon a Wedding" parodies.
   
8. Which William Butler Yeats' poems use the word "gyre"?
       Use: Ohiolink language and literature databases, W. B. Yeats Collection
       Answer: "Demon and Beast," "The Second Coming," "Sailing to Byzantium" (1928), and
          "The Gyres" (1938)
   
9. In what year were poets first honored on United States postage stamps?
       Use: Academy of American Poets
       Answer: 1940
   
10. Who said, "Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun"?
        Use: Ohiolink Language and Literature subject databases; Bartleby.com
        Answer: Gertrude Stein

Reading Journal Study Questions

The goal of the reading journal is to cultivate the habit of active reading and responding to poetry and literature in general (if not all texts). Use the journal as a space to:

 

1) work out your understanding of the operations of the elements of poetry,

2) practice close readings of individual poems, and

3) determining a sense of a poet's world view.

 

If you wish, you may use these prompts (to be updated by the day we discuss a poet) as a jumping off point for your responses. You must also devote entries to your group presentation poet and the poet you write your final paper on. 

 

Reading journal entries must be typed. By the end of the quarter you should have 15 entries of approximately 250 words each. Entries will be collected twice in the quarter: Thursday, 10-17 and Tuesday 12-3. You'll receive a tentative grade after the first submission and, if you wish, you may turn a few more entries in before the final submission on 12-3 to see if you're heading in the right direction, though this is not mandatory. Although electronic submission is preferred, you may submit reading journals in one of the following three ways:

 

1) as a hard copy print out,

2) via email as text, or

3) via one computer file (PC/Windows disk or email attachment of MS Word or WordPerfect).

1. William Shakespeare: What is love? Why might poetry be conducive to expressing love? What kind of language and tone do you expect from love poetry . . . and what does Shakespeare give you?
2. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Why do so many of Coleridge's poems take place at night? What about the night inspires him to write? What happens in the dark? What is the relationship between dream and poetry in Coleridge's work?
3. John Keats: What is death, and what is melancholy? How do we typically think about death and melancholy . . . and what does Keats give us? How might the act of writing the poem affect Keats' world view?
4. Friedrich Hölderlin: What is the poet's vocation, according to Hölderlin? What is the poet's relation to his people, his culture? Related to this question are these: what are myths, and why do people write them? Why does Greek mythology of heroes, demigods, and gods figure so predominantly in his poetry?
5. Emily Dickinson: What is Dickinson's relationship with life? According to her mindset, how are life and death related? How does her world view contrast with Keats'?
6. William Butler Yeats: Describe Yeats' spirituality. How does he set up cycles of spiritual life? How do myth, nature, and the primitive function differently in Yeats than, say, Hölderlin?
7. Langston Hughes: How does rhythm function in Hughes poems? How does rhythm correlate in water imagery in Hughes' poems? What are the blues and why does Hughes have them?
8. Wallace Stevens: What is the relationship between reality and the imagination? between nature and culture? between physics and metaphysics? How does poetry compose reality?
9. George Oppen: What is the difference between an image and a thing? a word and an object? How does Oppen see the relationship between art (including poetry) and reality?
10. Anne Sexton: What is a confession? Do you think Sexton is confessing? If so, why, to whom, and what does it do for her psyche?
11. John Ashbery: What is self-reflection and what is daydreaming? What is the nature of knowledge, consciousness, the self? How does Ashbery's view of reality and self compare with, for instance, Stevens?
12. Fanny Howe: What is Howe's relationship with language and communication? How do her language and her imagery compare with, for instance, Ashbery's or Oppen's?
13. William Carlos Williams: How does Williams define the relationship between Paterson the city and Paterson the man? How do the prose documents relate to the poetry? What kind of language is the poet seeking?
14. group presentation poet
15. poet for final paper

Criticism Sign-Up

To prepare for the annotated bibliography, we'll read a critical article on Wallace Stevens and write a practice annotation. Also note the correct MLA citation format as a reference for your bibliographies.

1. Bloom, Harold. "Reduction to the First Idea." Dialectics 6 (1976): 48-57. Rpt. in Critical Essays on Wallace Stevens. Eds. Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. 84-98.
   Students: Le Andre' Boone, Sarah Heintz, Katie Kinzig, Katelyn Pivoriunas
   
2. Frye, Northrop. "The Realistic Oriole: A Study of Wallace Stevens." Fables of Identity. New York: Harcourt, 1963. Rpt. in Critical Essays on Wallace Stevens. Eds. Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. 63-77.
   Students: Andi Carty, Courtney Jacobs, Anna Matisak, Roger Sansuchat
   
3. Miller, J. Hillis. "Wallace Stevens." The Poets of Reality. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1965. Rpt. in Critical Essays on Wallace Stevens. Eds. Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. 77-84.
   Students: Laura Duplain, Adeel Karim, Amber Meyers, Meghan Quinn
   
4. Yukman, Claudia. "An American Poet's Idea of Language." Critical Essays on Wallace Stevens. Eds. Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. 230-45.
   Students: Jeremy S. Goldstein, Nicole Kidston, Rachel Pelphrey, Julie Sanzone, James Stewart

Exam Review

• The midterm is designed for you to exemplify your ability to read poetry and make connections among poems and poets. Show me how you analyze poetry; show me how you make correspondences between poets. To prepare, read through all the poems (and your annotations) covered so far. Study your class notes, listservs, reading journals. Be able to discuss the predominant concerns of any given poet; be able to point to instances in specific poems where these issues are apparent.
• The midterm exam will be essay format. You'll be given three or four thematic, comparative questions and asked to answer two or three. Your essays must have an overarching thesis/controlling idea which your essays support with textual evidence and reasoned argument.
• All poets and poems in the course packet up to and including Sexton's are fair game; however, the issues we cover in class will take priority as I write the questions. Be prepared to write about at least six poets, having a few of their poems in mind for thematic and interpretive talking points.
• You will be asked to do a close reading of a poem you've not read before. You'll be required to demonstrate your understanding of certain elements of poetry in that reading, i.e., by showing how element A creates theme B. The elements you will definitely use at some point in the exam are speaker and tone, words and imagery, irony, symbol, and the figures of speech of metaphor and paradox. You should be aware of sound, rhythm, and form, but only inasmuch as it helps you analyze the poem's meaning. Do not get bogged down in forms and formal analysis, rather interpret the meaning and the mind of the poetry. Click here to review the elements.

Group Presentation and

Annotated Bibliography

1. Sign Up Sheet

The previous assignments (reading journal, listserv responses, midterm) compelled you to analyze poems, to estimate the poet's world view. This assignment asks you to do just that, but also to teach the class what you've come to understand. Groups of three or four will 1) research and compose an annotated bibliography of 20 authoritative and significant critical interpretations of an individual poet and 2) use what they've learned from the annotated bibliography as well as their own analysis of the poet to teach the class selected poems of their poet.  The annotated bibliography must be turned in via email attachment or link by Monday, November 25 at 4:30 PM. Multimedia-enhanced oral presentations will be on November 26, December 3, and December 5.  The presentation and bibliography should be scholarly—not only informative but also argumentative and thesis-driven. This assignment is neither a book report nor a biography, but instead a critical and analytical interpretation of a poet's opus.

 

The purpose of this sheet is merely to form groups.  Sign up for two slots, placing a #1 by your first choice and a #2 by your second choice.  Once groups are assigned, those groups are responsible for meeting with me outside of class to determine a poet of the movement to research.  Click here for the particular parameters of the assignment.

 

Romanticism: William Blake	Adeel Karim
Modernism: Robert Frost	Laura Duplain Amber Meyers Matt Stewart
Harlem Renaissance
Objectivism or Other (group's choice): Charles Baudelaire	Courtney Jacobs Rachel Pelphrey Julie Sanzone
Confessional poetry / Naked poetry: W. S. Merwin	Sarah Heintz Meghan Quinn
Confessional poetry / Naked poetry: Galway Kinnell	Le Andre' Boone
Language poetry: Lyn Hejinian	Andi Carty Nicole Kidston Katelyn Pivoriunas
Other (group's choice): Edgar Allen Poe	Jeremy Goldstein Katie Kinzig Anna Matisak

• Romanticism (like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Friedrich Hölderlin): William Blake, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Clare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Charles Baudelaire
• Modernism (like William Butler Yeats and Wallace Stevens): e. e. cummings, T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, H. D., Marianne Moore, Hart Crane
• Harlem Renaissance (like Langston Hughes): Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Paul Lawrence Dunbar
• Objectivist Poetry (like George Oppen and William Carlos Williams): Lorine Neidecker, Ezra Pound, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff, Gertrude Stein, Louis Zukofsky [Louis Zukofsky, ed.: An "Objectivists" Anthology]
• Confessional poetry / Naked poetry (like Anne Sexton): John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, Galway Kinnell, Robert Lowell, W. S. Merwin, Sylvia Plath, W.D. Snodgrass, James Wright
• Language poetry (like John Ashbery and Fanny Howe): Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Clark Coolidge, Beverly Dahlen, Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten [Douglas Messerli, ed.: Language Poetry: An Anthology]
• Group's Choice (in conjunction with me): could choose a poet from a movement or school we've not covered, such as, but not limited to, the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat poetry (Lawrence Ferlinghtti, Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Ted Berrigan, Richard Brautigan), or the Black Arts movement (Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks)

2. Goals

1. To learn research skills such as using the web to find sources both in print and online as well as evaluating those sources.
2. To learn how to construct a web page as well as how to compose an oral presentation enhanced by audiovisual technology.
3. To learn and introduce to the class a poet's work and world view by summarizing scholarly research and leading the class through an analysis of exemplary poems.

3. Annotated Bibliography Component

An annotated bibliography lists, summarizes, and evaluates works of authoritative, scholarly criticism.

Due: Monday, November 25 by 4:30 PM via 1) email attachment in a zipped file or 2) link to your website

 

Format: In the website you create to convey the annotated bibliography, you must include the following: topic, question, search strategy, summary of findings, 20 sources/annotations. Beyond these elements, the design of the page is left up to you—be as creative as you wish.  Feel free to make my website look bad and boring by using pictures, audio, animation.  Have fun with it! Note: You can either create a site and email it to me to post to the course website or you can find your own internet space and simply send me the link to the site.

Research Topic

Give the broad concept or issue that you’ll be investigating.

Research Question

Contextualize what you already know, based upon class and group discussion, and pose a question or two that has guided your research.

Search Strategy

Recapitulate where and how you went about your search for sources. What subject guides, subject directories, and search engines did you use for internet sources? Besides OSCAR, what databases did you use to find print sources? Tip: follow the research methodology of this handout, Online Resources in the Literature Classroom, demonstrated earlier in the quarter. Don’t put off obtaining print sources until the last minute.  You should request and check out materials from libraries a full two weeks before the assignment is due.  Once you have a critical article or book, check its works cited and reference pages for other books that might help your research.

Summary of Findings

In 250 words, summarize the different critical interpretations of the poet, describe where critics converge and diverge, and criticize the lines of argument.  Compare and contrast the usefulness and informativeness of web versus print sources.

20 secondary sources

• kinds of sources: at least 15 must be scholarly journal articles, books, or book chapters
  no more than 5 may be websites, and these websites should offer argument, not biography
  no encyclopedias, magazines, newspapers, primary texts; also, no critical articles and websites used in class already
• arrangement: alphabetically according to MLA standards
• annotations: summarize and evaluate the source in 75-100 words
• identify the issue or question that the source is investigating<
• define the source’s thesis, or main idea relevant to your research question
• describe how the source helps your understanding of the poet

4. Group Presentation Component

The presentation should accomplish two objectives:

1. summarize the ways critics read the poet as well as what issues they debate
2. teach selected representative poems to the class according to your own reading of the poems

Format: As long as you meet these two objectives, the format of the presentation is completely up to you. You may choose to use aspects of the annotated bibliography to guide your group presentation. Note that you have all the technology of our lab at your disposal: projector, cd players, speakers, web browsers, Microsoft Powerpoint; and I can reserve a television/vcr/dvd if you need one.

 

Length: 20 minutes including a five-minute question and answer period

 

Due: Groups will present on November 26, December 3, and December 5.

5. Final Notes

Both the annotated bibliography and the group presentation should move beyond mere description and reporting of biography.  Instead, both should be driven by critical analysis and thesis-oriented interpretation.

 

Although I will provide class time for groups to meet, you absolutely must meet outside of class two or three times in order to coordinate your research, construct your web page, and rehearse your presentation.

6. Examples

Example websites by former 260C are on the course website.

Final Paper

The goal of the final paper is to help you constitute a deeper and more complex understanding of a poet's primary themes, her psyche. All of the assignments have been leading up to this point. From class discussion and listserv responses, you've practiced doing close reading and textual analysis; from reading journals and the midterm exam, you've learned to worked with poets' general themes and world views. From the annotated bibliography and group presentation, with the help of your peers and secondary sources, you've combined close readings and world view by teaching the class a poet. This assignment is similar, sans peers and secondary sources. Choose a poet, any poet from the course packet or group presentations or even outside the class (subject to my approval) of whose core themes and world view you're interested in developing a deeper and more complex understanding. Read one or two of the poet's books of poetry and write a journal entry on those collections to collect and define your thoughts. Then choose one of the following two options.

 

Option 1: A Critical Essay: Your final paper should analyze the poet's basic questions as you see them; your final paper should argue the poet's core conflicts as you interpret them. It should balance close reading and general thematics, using three or four poems that best exhibit the poet's basic subject matter. Don't do close readings of each and every poem; instead, dip into those sections of the poems that best illustrate your interpretation, while putting the poems as a whole in conversation. Check with me to see if I have the poems you're using; if I don't please turn a copy or link in with your paper. The final paper of 2000 words minimum, is formal and as such should use MLA style for quoting, headers, and citation. Here are MLA formal paper templates in Microsoft Word and Corel Word Perfect formats.

 

Option 2: An Original Poem and Critical (Self-)Assessment: The original poem (to be read to the class) should respond to the ideas and feelings, the primary style and imagination, the worldview and the poetic psyche, of your favorite poet, the poet who has most influenced your understanding of yourself and your world. The critical self-assessment, of no less than 1250 words, should combine first an analytical and thematic explanation of your understanding of the poet and second your artist statement explaining the ideas, feelings, and/or form you were attempting to convey in your poem, especially how they respond to your favorite poet's work. In other words, analyze your poetic process in terms of feeling and the elements of poetry utilized to render that feeling. You must turn in or link the exemplary poems of the poet you're responding to unless you've verified with me that I have them. For the essay portion, use MLA style for quoting, headers, and citation. Here are MLA formal paper templates in Microsoft Word and Corel Word Perfect formats. Note: for this option you must read the first draft of your poem in class Thursday, December 5. You may revise the poem and turn in the essay portion on Tuesday, December 10.

 

Due: Tuesday, December 10 by 1:30 PM (Option 1: first draft of poem must be read in class, Thursday, December 5)

Format: either 1) print out,

2) PC disk of Windows compatible Microsoft Word or Corel Word Perfect documents, or

3) email attachment of Windows compatible Microsoft Word or Corel Word Perfect documents