Four levels of poetry; the sensory level

exercises

Assignment:

• Commonplace book or notebook
• Descriptive poem
• The Image
• Write three poems from Daily Poet

Reading for next week: Descriptive poems, list poems

• Poet's Companion, 85-103*
• Addonzio, Ordinary Genius, chapters 1-5, 30 and Mayes, chapter 3: Images* (See Blackboard)
• From Autumn House Anthology*: Cramer, "Benevolence of the Butcher," Fairchild, "Photograph of the Titanic,"Hales, "The Rich," "Kooser, "Laundry," Merwin, "No," Seibles, "Latin"
• Online: "In a station of the Metro,""At the Fishhouses*"; "By the Road to the Contagious Hospital*,""The Beautiful Changes,", "Lying in a Hammock," "Above Pate Valley*"

Four levels of poetry;

sonic level, ideational level (myth)

Reading for next week: sonic level

• Poet's Companion*, 104-114; 56-63
• Addonzio, 6-10, and Mayes, chapter 2 sound* (see Blackboard)
• Autumn House anthology*: Yona Harvey, Blessing Blue Crabs; Kumin, February; Kay Ryan, Blandeur; Vollmer, Early Snow
• Online: sound: Heaney, Follower*; Bishop, The Bight*; Hopkins, Windhover; The Seafarer; Lux, Time*; Fulton, About Face

Writing Homework: post a poem on the first discussion board. Write a poem describing a collections of old objects, a old photograph you have some connection to but don't know well, or a landscape, a list on things on your desk (or some other list), a poem using specialized vocabulary (like quilting), or an object (like an old boat) described as your parents--or choose another topic.

Respond to the three workshop poems plus at least three others. Try to make sure everyone gets responded to.

Discussion of the sonic poems

Workshopping (use this prompt):

Reading for next week: Myth/ persona poems

• Seshadri: 3 Sections (Winner of National Book Award)
  • Use this worksheet to make your way through the book (I will collect your worksheet after you use it for discussion)
• Online, myth (all these*): Collier "Argos", Tennyson, "Ulysses"; Yeats "Leda"; Wright, "Saint Judas"; Atwood "Siren's song", Stevens, "The World as Meditation", Sexton, Her Kind*, Gluck, Gretel in Darkness (or here); Pinksy, Childhood of Jesus; Adams, Cerberus at the SPCA
• Look up the Myths:
  • Encyclopedia Mythica
  • Mythweb searchable encyclopedia
  • Perseus project
  • Greek Mythology Link
  • SurLaLune Annotated Fairy Tales site
  • Grimm's Fairy Tales
  • Folk and Fairy Tales resource page
  • Infancy Gospel of Thomas (for Pinsky poem)
    

Writing Homework: Try a sonic poem that uses sounds.

Discussion of mythic poems.

Workshopping (use this prompt):

Revision: Yeats at Work.

Reading for Next week:

• Szybist: Incarnadine
  • Use this worksheet to make your way through the book
• Poet's Companion, 138-150
• Addonzio, chapter 34-35
• Mayes, Chapter 11
• Some things to try when you revise

Poetry Readings for next week: syllabics and stress prosody examples

• Beowulf, Original (just look at it) and an excerpt from Heaney's verse transation
• Pound, "Seafarer," Wilbur, "Junk*""The Writer*" Moore, "The Fish"; Thomas, "Fern Hill"; Hardy's The Temporary the All*

Poetry readings for next week (Voice, Directives, and other kinds of persona poems)

• Online: Homer, Odyssey Excerpt; Frost, Directive*; Ash, Road to Ogalma; Wilbur, Advice to a Prophet; Merwin, For A Comng Extinction*; Denis Johnson, The White Fires of Venus*; Hardy, Channel Firing; Donne, Holy Sonnet; Lindsay, Tell the Bees*; Girmay, Consider the Hands; de la Torre, How to Look at Mexican Highways*
• Essay: Frost's Prime Directive
  

Writing Homework: Try a "myth" poem or poem from the point of view of a fictional or historical character.

Four levels of poetry: sonic level (accentual prosody and syllabic prosody)

Workshopping (use this prompt):

Reading for next week: repeating forms

Poet's Companion 151-170

Poetry Reading for next week Sestinas

• Bishop, Sestina and a cool article about it
• Cummins, from The Whole Truth (sestina sequence)
  • Great essay by Cummins on sestinas
• Angelica Waters, Child Reading
• A bunch of recent sestinas by contempary authors
• Another collection

Online: Other repeating forms

• Canzonetta
• Triolet
• Quatern
• Rondel
• Pantoums

Writing homework: Try a directive. Try a poem using either syllabic or stress prosody.

Reading for next week:

• Gluck, Faithful and Virtuous Night
• Addonzio 28 (pp 237-49)
• article: Scan and variation
• How to scan

iambic pentameter poems for next week:

Online "St Crispin's Day" speech by Shakespeare (and hear Kenneth Branagh say it); Coleridge, Frost at Midnight; Browning, "The Bishop Orders his Tomb;" Frost, "Mending Wall""Home Burial"; "Birches*," Stevens, "Idea of Order at Key West*," Wilbur, "Lying*," Stafford "Traveling," Merrill "Charles on Fire, Rich "Living in Sin,*" Nemerov, Gyroscope, Stanford, Private Autumn

Writing Homework: Write a sestina

Iambic Pentameter

• Gluck: Faithful and Virtuous Night
  • Use this worksheet to make your way through the book

Workshopping

Ideational level: Other arts

Reading for next week: Ekphrasis

• Poets.org: Poets confronting art*
• Keats, "Ode on a grecian urn"; Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium" (see Metropolitan Museum exhibit on Byzantine art); Crane, "Chaplineque"; Hughes "Dream Boogie" ; Auden "Musee des Beaux Arts" (also inspired by other work in the same wing); Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz" ; O'Hara, "The Day Lady Died"
• Online: Stevens, "The Paltry Nude" (inspired by Botticelli's Birth of Venus) & "Thirteen ways" (inspired by Cubism); Williams "The Dance"
  • The Poets speak of art (online project at Emory University) (link updated) (* Read introduction plus three poems)

Discussion: Poems about Art

Workshop

Readings for Next Week

• Bly's Leaping Poetry (selections)* see Blackboard
• Poet's Companion: 129-138 ("Stop Making Sense")

Procedural poems for next week:

• Language poetry and "method" poetry
  • Explanation, history and an essay on its political nature*
  • Online examples: John Cage's Indeterminacy (click on "stories" and then hit reload to see new poems); Alice Fulton's A little Hear to Heart with the Horizon; Leslie Scalapino's Tango
• Found Poetry
• Explanation
• Somebody's Found Poetry assignment (if you need a method)
• Examples: The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld; Adams, Dense Smoke...; Annie Dillard, selections from Morning Like This
• Activities:
  • Mad Libs Poetry (here's my example)
  • Half poem (from a poem by Ralph Angel)
  • 20 Poetry Projects

Billy Collins, "Workshop,"

Discussion: Procedural poems

Activities:

• Mad Libs Poetry (here's my example)
• Half poem (from a poem by Ralph Angel)
• 20 Poetry Projects

Workshopping

For next week: Rhyming forms and the Ghazal

• More in the way of explanation
• Ghazal net (online site of ghazals in English)
• Another site with ghazals; more explanations
• Sonic level: kinds of rhyme
• Typographical level: Stanzas, strophes, verse paragraphs

Reading for next week (these poems are either ghazals or they use rhyme in ways that disguise it or transform it)

• Hiding the Rhyme (My exercise)
• Online: Auden, Musee des beaux arts (again) and Shield of Achilles; Hecht, More Light ; Kumin, "Noted in the NY Times"; Edward Taylor, Upon a spider catching a fly; Longellow, Lost Youth; Frost, To Earthward; Marianne Moore, Feed Me Also, River God; Millay, Rendezvous; Hughes, Harlem; Bishop The Shampoo and a nice discussion of it;Swenson, The Wave and the Dune Wilbur, The Beautiful Changes; Herbert, Man and The Collar; Owen, Futility; Wilbur, Advice to a prophet (again) and Cottage Street 1953; Yeats, Cuchulain Comforted; Hopkins, Bugler's First Communion, To What Serves Mortal Beauty; Yeats "Wild Swans at Coole"; Herbert, Baptism, Hardy, At Castle Boterel; Donne, Valediction: of Weeping; Bogan, Medusa
• Rhymed form: ghazals (with an archive of Urdu Ghazals)
• Online: Ali, Even the Rain; Clark, Riverside Ghazal; Heather McHugh Ghazal (kind of loose); Cole, Ghazal of What hurt

Homework: Write a procedural or "Found" poem (or choose your own topic)

Discussion: tapping the unconscious and Bly's Leaping Poetry

Turco discussion: Sonic level rhyme

• iding the Rhyme (My exercise)
• Online: Auden, Musee des beaux arts (again) and Shield of Achilles; Hecht, More Light ; Kumin, "Noted in the NY Times"; Edward Taylor, Upon a spider catching a fly; Longellow, Lost Youth; Frost, To Earthward; Marianne Moore, Feed Me Also, River God; Millay, Rendezvous; Hughes, Harlem; Bishop The Shampoo and a nice discussion of it;Swenson, The Wave and the Dune Wilbur, The Beautiful Changes; Herbert, Man and The Collar; Owen, Futility; Wilbur, Advice to a prophet (again) and Cottage Street 1953; Yeats, Cuchulain Comforted; Hopkins, Bugler's First Communion, To What Serves Mortal Beauty; Yeats "Wild Swans at Coole"; Herbert, Baptism, Hardy, At Castle Boterel; Donne, Valediction: of Weeping; Bogan, Medusa
• Rhymed form: ghazals (with an archive of Urdu Ghazals)
• Online: Ali, Even the Rain; Clark, Riverside Ghazal; Heather McHugh Ghazal (kind of loose); Cole, Ghazal of What hurt

Workshopping

Reading for next week:

Sapphics

• Explanation: by Betty Ann Whitley
• A Sapphics page by Alberto Rios at Arizona State (contains some examples)
• Another article by Rachel Wetzsteon
• Poets.org article and example
• Introduction to Greek Meter (difficult, but interesting)
• Sappho 's Hymn to Aphrodite
  • Originial greek --just in case; followed by a bunch of poet's translations
  • translation by Elizabeth Vandiver;
• Online: Swinburne, Sapphics; Hardy, The Temporary, The All; Lampman, Alycone; Scott, Sapphics for Sappho; Watts, Day of Judgement: An Ode; Hans Schmidt & Johannes Brahms, Sapphic Ode (German and English); Pollitt, Two Cats; A sapphic poem by some of my freshmen poets

Homework: write a ghazal or a poem that borrows a form or rhyme strategy (varied line length, enjambment, half rhyme, internal rhyme, etc.) from another poem (make sure that it rhymes and that you observe some of the rules of hiding rhyme).

Sapphics

• Explanation: by Betty Ann Whitley
• A Sapphics page by Alberto Rios at Arizona State (contains some examples)
• Another article by Rachel Wetzsteon
• Poets.org article and example
• Introduction to Greek Meter (difficult, but interesting)
• Sappho 's Hymn to Aphrodite
  • Originial greek --just in case; followed by a bunch of poet's translations
  • translation by Elizabeth Vandiver;
• Online: Swinburne, Sapphics; Hardy, The Temporary, The All; Lampman, Alycone; Scott, Sapphics for Sappho; Watts, Day of Judgement: An Ode; Hans Schmidt & Johannes Brahms, Sapphic Ode (German and English); Pollitt, Two Cats; A sapphic poem by some of my freshmen poets

Workshopping

Readings for Next Week: Elegies and Animals

• Turco: 148-149
• Online Dickinson, 328; Frost, Oven Bird, Design;Jeffers, Fire on the Hills; Cummings "my father moved..." ; Bishop Roosters; Merwin, For the anniversary; Dickey, The Heaven of Animals ; Gioia, Planting a Sequoiah; O'Hara, The Day Lady Died; James Wright, A Blessing; Kees For My Daughter; Tate, The Lost Pilot; Ryan, Home to Roost
• Online: Broughton, Song for Sampson, Levine, Animals are passing from our lives; Hardy, Last Words to a Dumb Friend and At Castle Boterel; Bishop, North Haven, Millay from To Elinor Wylie; Roethke, Elegy for Jane; Auden, Elegy for W.B. Yeats, Justice, Psalm & Lament; Smart, Jubilate Agno; Dickey, Dusk of Horses
• A small selection of Nature Poems: Hopkins, Windhover; Snyder, Above Pate Valley; Wendell Berry ( an interview); Mary Oliver Wild Geese

homework: Write a sapphic (or choose another topic)

Workshopping

Sonic level: pantoums and villanelles (read for next week)

• AHA:
• Pantoums (a definition)
  • Funkhouser, First Pantoum of Summer
  • Cramer, Everyone who Left Us
  • Kizer, Parent's Pantoum
  • Fagan, Saloon Pantoum
  • Cathy Barber, The Vigil
  • Justice, Pantoum of the Great Depression
  • Stewart, Punk Pantoum (note the white text--copy and paste into Word, then print it)
  • Jendi Reiter, Pantoum (scroll down to it)
  • Feinfeld, The Pantoum (about pantoums...)
  • Verlaine, Pantoum Negligé (for those who can read French)
  • Stallings, Another Lullaby for Insomniacs
• Villanelle (a definition with examples including Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle...
  • Another definition with most of the classic examples including Bishop, Art of Losing; Roethke, I Wake to Sleep
  • E.A. Robinson, The House on the Hill
  • Wilde, Theocritus: A Villanelle
  • Auden, Villanelle (in there with some others)
  • Justice, Villanelle at Sundown
  • Disch, Rapist's Villanelle (scroll down) and Entropic Villanelle (scroll down)
  • Williams, Villanelle for the Cows
  • Kumin, The Nuns of Childhood
  • Cramer, Villanelle After Burial
  • de los Santos, For a Stillborn
• Terza Rima and Terzanelle
• Terza Rima Examples:
  • Divine Comedy
  • Acquainted with the Night
  • One of mine (with dogs)

Homework: Write an elegy or animal poem (or choose another topic)

Exercise: Narrative into poem

Speech Acts: the manner of expression (as opposed to the content). Examples of speech acts include: question, promise, plea, declaration, prayer, offer, warning, advice, call, chant, oath, thank, apologize, and command. Others: deictics: "Over here!" "See you soon."

• Louise Gluck: annotated
• W.S. Merwin,analyzed
• Strand's poem and Dickens' novel
• Example 1: Young
• Example 2: Lux
• Example 3: Collins
• Example 4: Millay

Workshopping

sonic level: sonnets and fourteeners, including nonce sonnets

• Sonnet
  • Herbert, Prayer
  • Keats, Bright Star
  • Meredith, Modern Love--16-line-sonnet sequence (don't read it all)
  • Frost, Design
  • Jarman, Four sonnets
  • Kees, For my Daughter (also in Anthology)
  • Bruce Smith, (a fourteener)
• Triolet (an explanation) (and another with examples by McPherson, Gioia, and others) Note: this form attracts people who think they are Irish
  • Hardy, Birds at Winter Nightfall and The Coquette, and After (uses Triolet stanza)
  • Cullen, For a Poet
  • Cornford, To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train
  • Teasdale, Four Triolets
  • Sandra McPherson, Triolet
  • Triolets for the masses:
    • A bunch of Triolets by MIT students about computing

HomeworK: Write one of the following: pantoum, villanelle, terzanelle, triolet, or sonnet (required if you didn't write a sapphic) or choose another topic

Workshopping

Ideational level: ars poetica; literature and language

William Matthews Inspiration 980

• The Ars Poetica (Poets.org)
• Poems about poetry
• More poems about Poetry
• The Secret of Poetry by the late lamented Jon Anderson

By next Tuesday, send or bring a portfolio with a preface or ars poetica (poem about poetry) at the beginning.