ENG 570 Techniques of Poetry
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
Tuesday | January 22, 2008
INTRODUCTION
Online Resources / Further Reading Assignments [linked material RECOMMENDED]:
Al Filreis's poetic terms
GLOSSARY OF POETIC TERMS
Another Glossary
Rhetorical Devices in Sound (great resource for figures of speech)
Tuesday | January 29, 2008
Read: Annie Finch & Kathrine Varnes, An Exaltation of Forms: "Acknowledgments"; "Introduction" (pages 1-11); "Accentual Verse," Dana Gioia (pages 15-23); "Syllabics," Margaret Holley (pages 24-31); "Counted Verse," Paul Hoover (pages 32-38); "Iambic Meter," John Ridland (pages 39-45); "Blank Verse," Anthony Hecht (page 46-51).
Read: John Hollander, Rhyme's Reason: pages ix-xii; 1-22.
Tuesday | February 5, 2008
IMPORTANT: Meeting with Bill Nericcio's class
Class meets early: 15:30-18:10
Location: HH 210
Topic: Oulipo, Uncreative Writing, and Intermedial Poetry
Guest Poet: Ara Shirinyan
Required readings :
(online): Ara Shirinyan: 2005 Resolution
(online: PDF file): Ara Shirinyan: Speech Genres 1-2 or click here and scroll down for Shirinyan, Speech Genres
Kenneth Goldsmith, "Being Boring" (in Seance, pages 67-72) (Listen to Kenny read the essay, with slight changes, here.) On-line version of the essay here.
Tuesday | February 12, 2008
Various and Sundry Poetics
Required readings:
John Ciardi, "An Act of Language" (handout)
Aldon Nielsen, "Oulipian Poetry" An Exaltation of Forms (page 385-90)
Jena Osman, "Procedural Poetry: The Intentions of Nonintention" An Exaltation of Forms (page 366-78)(online) Charles Bernstein, "Experiments"
(online) Charles Bernstein, "The Difficult Poem"
(online) Bernadette Mayer's "82 Writing Experiments"
Consider the poetic sensibility each of these pieces implies. How do the poetics implied or directly stated differ from piece to piece? How do they resonate with your own poetics? How do they depart from yours? In what ways do they challenge and/or support your own views on poetry and writing?
Also, an ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Find out more about Mr. Silliman here & here & here & here.
!!!AND GET YE TO MY LINKS PAGE!!! If you're a student in my class, you should spend some nights surfing around my the various sites linked to there. Listen to PENNSound & Close Listening, explore UBUWEB, read through the sites on my Theory Links...
Tuesday | February 19, 2008
Found: A Poem, Uncreative
Required readings:
Keith Tuma, "Beyond Found Poetry" An Exaltation of Forms (page 352-358)
David Lehman, "The List Poem" An Exaltation of Forms (page 359-365)(online) Kenneth Goldsmith, " Uncreativity as Creative Practice"
(online) Anne Henochowicz, "Petty Theft: Kenny G Give's A's for Unoriginality"
2nd Half: (At Last!) a film by Simon Morris: Kenneth Goldsmith: Sucking Words (59 min.)
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | February 26, 2008
East Meets West: From Holland[er] to Japan
Required readings:
John Hollander, Rhymes Reason (pages 23-70) [Feel free to flip through the appendix and the "Patterns in Practice" sections too]
Annie Finch, "Dactylic Meter: A Many Sounding Sea" An Exaltation of Forms (page 66-72)
Agha Shahid Ali, "Ghazal: To Be Teased into DisUnity" An Exaltation of Forms (page 210-16)
Jean Hyung Yul Chu, "Haiku" An Exaltation of Forms (page 217-22)
William J. Higginson & Penny Harter, "Japanese-Style Linked Poems"An Exaltation of Forms (page 228-37)Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | March 4, 2008
Visual Poetry! Abecedarian Poetry!
Required readings:
Joseph Thomas, "Letters to Children." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 30.1 (2005): 74-87. (Hand-out--I'll give this to you in class)
Thomas, "A Defence of Visual Poetry" Chapter FIVE of Poetry's Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children's Poetry. (Wayne State University Press: Landscapes of Childhood Series, 2007) (Hand-out)
Jan Hodge, "Taking Shape: The Art of Carmina Figurata" An Exaltation of Forms (page 198)
Neil Powell, "Concrete Poetry and Conceptual Art: A Spectre at the Feast?"
A Short Note on Abecedarian PoetryA list of "formally perfect literature works"-Alphabetical Africa is listed first
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | March 11, 2008
Back to Basics: Stanzas, Stanzas, Stanzas!
Required readings:
Thimothy Steele, "'The Bravest Sort of Verses': The Heroic Couplet," An Exaltation of Forms (pages 107-115)
brlix Stefanile, "The Self-Engendering Muse: Terza Rima" An Exaltation of Forms (pages 11-6-121)
John Hollander, "The Quatrain" An Exaltation of Forms (pages 122-131)
Jacqueline Osherow , "Ottava Rima " An Exaltation of Forms (pages 141-147)
Pat Mora, "The Decima: A Poetic Journey from Spain to New Mexico" An Exaltation of Forms (pages 156-166)
Assignment: Don't forget to bring in a list (annotated) of ten or so critical sources you plan to employ in your poetics paper. Also, you should bring in your writing assignments from last week and a visual revisioning of them.
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | March 18, 2008
Sound Poetry, Performance Poetry, and Other Noise
Required readings:
Steve McCaffery, "Sound Poetry - A Survey"
Charles Bernstein, "1-100"
Bob Holman, "Performance Poetry " An Exaltation of Forms (pages 341-351)
Tracie Morris, "Hip-Hop Rhyme Formations: Open Your Ears" An Exaltation of Forms (pages 223-227)
Search around Wikipedia and follow their external links to explore the subject of Sound Poetry and Performance Poetry online. And don't forget about Ubu!In-class: Poetry in Motion (film)
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Back to Basics: Stanzas, Stanzas, Stanzas!
Required readings:
Thimothy Steele, "'The Bravest Sort of Verses': The Heroic Couplet," An Exaltation of Forms (pages 107-115)
brlix Stefanile, "The Self-Engendering Muse: Terza Rima" An Exaltation of Forms (pages 11-6-121)
John Hollander, "The Quatrain" An Exaltation of Forms (pages 122-131)
Jacqueline Osherow , "Ottava Rima " An Exaltation of Forms (pages 141-147)
Pat Mora, "The Decima: A Poetic Journey from Spain to New Mexico" An Exaltation of Forms (pages 156-166)
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | April 1, 2008: SPRING BREAK!!!
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | April 8, 2008
POETICS PAPER DUE IN CLASS TONIGHT
Also due: bring in four (4) typed copies of a 15-20 line poem employing a form/constraint found in any of our books for this semester (for instance, you may write a poem in terza rima; or using a constraint from the Oulipo Compendium). Above your typed poem, include a paragraph or so discussing the form you adopted (we'll call this meta-writing). In this bit of prose, you should explain why you choose the form you did, explore particular challenges it offered, discuss the surprises you encountered while writing the poem, and other related issues.
Reminder: your copies should include the poem AND the meta-writing.
Good luck, and enjoy the spring break. NO READINGS save those you've assigned yourself!
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | April 15, 2008: !!!!!DON'T TAX ME, [big] BROTHER!!!!!!
BRING TO CLASS: One poem (and four copies) of a performance poem. That is, bring to class a poem that "falls flat" on the page, but that is extended, complicated, or completed by some set of performative acts. Consider the various performances in Poetry in Motion for ideas. Also, include a brief, paragraph or so, explanation of these performative acts and how they add to or complete the poem as written text.
Also, read this essay, in honor of National Poetry Month:
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | April 22, 2008
Assignment for today's class:
From "Statement on Prosody," George Oppen:
"I try one word and another word, reverse the sequence, alter the line-endings, a hundred, two hundred rewritings, revisions--This is called prosody: how to write a poem. Or rather how to write that poem. [ ... ] every and and but must be revelatory--a music. We must think what is being asserted in the 'little' words. [... For] primarily and above all, and note by note, the prosody carries the relation of things and the sequence."
So: for your next poem, write a poem focusing on the "little words," the "function words," that we often ignore or don't consider when writing: articles (the and a) or pronouns (he or she), prepositions (of or above) or conjugations (and or or), auxiliary verbs (be or have) or interjections (wow! or huh?), particles (however or thus) or expletives (it is or there are). These are words that don't "mean" like other words, so they're perfect for building a poetry about words first and foremost as objects, as matter. Like Charles Bernstein writes in the essay we read for class today ("Against National Poetry Month as Such"):
"The reinvention, the making of a poetry for our time, is the only thing that makes poetry matter. And that means, literally, making poetry matter, that is making poetry that intensifies the matter or materiality of poetry—acoustic, visual, syntactic, semantic. Poetry is very much alive when it finds ways of doing things in a media-saturated environment that only poetry can do, but very much dead when it just retreads the same old same old."
There's your challenge. Gertrude Stein famously wrote that her favorite part of speech was the preposition. Consider William James's famous comment on "grammatical particles," where he writes,
"Philosophy has always turned on grammatical particles," James continues: "With, near, next, like, from, towards, against, because, for, through, my--these words designate types of conjunctive relation arranged in a roughly ascending order of intimacy and inclusiveness." (197)
The same might be said about poetry. What might this poetry look like? Maybe like Stein's Tender Buttons, in which she shocks familiar nouns into radical defamiliarity by using prepositions and "small words," "grammatical particles" in novel ways:
ROAST POTATOES.
Roast potatoes for.
or
POTATOES.
Real potatoes cut in between.
or
CUSTARD.
Custard is this. It has aches, aches when. Not to be. Not to be narrowly. This makes a whole little hill.
For a bonus, dig this video, especially around 1:59 or so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_LkAAzCQrQ
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | April 29, 2008
Read for class "Gertude Stein on Punctuation"--print a copy out and bring it to class with you as well: (if you can't download the pdf version linked to here, try this html version, Kenneth Goldsmith, "Gertrude Stein on Punctuation"
Considering Stein's words on punctuation and Goldsmith's visual poem employing her punctuation marks, write your own poem or piece that foregrounds punctuation marks in some novel or innovative way.
Bring in your punctuation poem and your "particles of grammar" poem (from last week) to class, along with about four copies of each. Please include a paragraph or so explaining the process you employed when writing your poem, outlining your thoughts about its interest and success, and any other details you wish to explore.
A news article about the death of Peter Christopher, a wonderful person and talented writer.
Peter is the author of Lost Dogs and Other Stories (which I cannot find online) and Campfires of the Dead (Knopf). His passing should remind us how precious life is, how quickly it ends, and how friendship, love, and art can sustain us during our darkest hours. He will be missed.
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
Tuesday | May 6, 2008
Ongoing assignment: read through the latest entries at Ron Silliman's Blog
FRIDAY May 16: FINALS WEEK
PORTFOLIO DUE BY FRIDAY, MAY 16, in my OFFICE
CLICK HERE FOR DESCRIPTION of PORTFOLIO ASSIGNMENT