:: Jill Magi
::
This semester, we will
1. develop ways of understanding poetry, to read poetry closely, and to learn to write about poetry
2. explore 20th century history and the history of ideas via poetry
3. develop an understanding of 20th century American poetics, particularly the poetics of the so-called counter-culture or experimental
4. become familiar with "the cannon´s poets" while critical of anthologizing practices that exclude poets of color and women, and the poetries of popular culture, particularly in music
5. articulate the insider position of poets of color and women in the matrix of modernism and post-modernism
And, finally, because the dichotomy of reader/writer or worse yet, writer/critic is a dichotomy created and reinforced by literary and academic marketplace interests, we will occasionally write poetry together in class. This is not Poetry Workshop but we will experiment with various writing activities so as to become different kinds of readers.
Course Schedule
Week One: Fracture/Free-verse/Vernacular and Hybridity: the Legacies of Dickinson, Whitman, Dunbar
Week Two: The List Poem: Sabina, Whitman, Waldman / discuss Rothenberg and Jorris introduction
Week Three: The Blues and Poetry / Harlem Renaissance Concerns, Part I
Week Four: Politics, Forms, and Modernism: Harlem Renaissance Poets, Part II
Week Five: Euro-centric Modernism: T. S. Eliot, Pound / Language Experiments: Gertrude Stein
Week Six: Tolson and the Long Poem / The Other Post WWII Poetry : Olson, Williams
Week Seven: Beat Poets / The New York School
Week Eight: The Black Arts Movement / Multiculturalism
Week Nine: Hip-hop and Poetry / Grandmaster Flash, The Roots, Paul Beatty, Tracie Morris
Week Ten: What is an American Poetry?: Rosemarie Waldrop and Joy Harjo
Week Eleven: An American Poetry part II: Victor Hernandez Cruz and Harryette Mullen
Week Twelve: Language Poetry: Hejinian and Scalapino
Week Thirteen: Writing/Drawing/Poly-lingualism: Cecilia Vicuña
Week Fourteen: Review / Work on Papers
Week Fifteen: Final Presentations