COML 1134: Reading Poetry (FWS) #

9/2: Introduction

What's your relationship to reading? What does it feel like to read different kinds of texts? This week we will read five poems by A.R. Ammons, Christian Bök, H.D., Reginald Shepherd, and Juliana Spahr. What do you notice in each?

9/4: Selections from 9/2

Make the introduction post to the Discussion Board.
We will continue with poems on the slides from Day 1.
Come to class with questions about the syllabus or schedule.

9/7: Gertrude Stein, “Susie Asado” (p. 125), “Repetition” (PEPP, 1168)

What's the role of repetition in Stein's poetry?
Does the meaning of each word "matter"?
Poetics vs. hermeneutics
Poetry + {song, painting, science, politics}

9/9: Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons, Harryette Mullen, Recyclopedia

Read as much of S*PeRM**K*T in Recyclopedia as you can. Focus on Roastbeef in Tender Buttons, explore whatever else catches your eye. Mullen's S*PeRM**K*T directly corresponds to Stein's “Food” section of Tender Buttons. How does it differentiate itself from its source of inspiration?

9/11: Francis Ponge, “The Carnation” (“L’œillet”), excerpts from Unfinished Ode to Mud, Andrew Epstein,“The Rhapsody of Things as They Are”

Let's try to identify specific rhetorical patterns, techniques, and tropes in Ponge’s writing which we might employ in our own.

9/14: Robert Hass: Introduction, Chapters 1-3, from A Little Book on Form

• Prior to class, put in the #line slack channel a favorite quote from Hass or favorite quoted poem from the reading. Briefly comment on why you chose it, or not (in which case I will probably call on you in class to comment further).
• Keep a list of favorite lines mentioned in these chapters, in previous or future readings, and in poems you may have independently found. Try to figure out why you like a given line, couplet, or tercet of poetry. How does it “embody the energy of the gesture of its making”?

9/16: Whitman, “Song of Myself”; Hass: “A Note on Stress,” “How to Scan a Poem”

Prior to class, keep a list of favorite lines from Whitman, adding to the #whitman channel one excerpt that you are particularly drawn to, with or without commentary by Tuesday at 22:00. You might want to scan it and discuss what you find. Also put one excerpt from the Hass reading in the #meter channel by Tuesday night.

9/18: Whitman cont., A.R. Ammons: Corsons Inlet; Hass: “How Free Verse Works”

• Prior to class, make a post in the #freeverse channel. Comment on how line groupings and/or meter function in some excerpt of A.R. Ammons's "Corsons Inlet" or Robert Hass's "Meditation at Lagunitas" relate to your more immediate reaction to the poem's expression. Post by Thursday @ 22:00. Earlier is better!
• After class, start looking at the Sonnet reader and begin drafting your discussion board post, which is essentially a draft or proposal for Essay 1, "Line."

We will take an “inductive” approach to the sonnet form this week by reading a wide range of sonnets by Petrarch, Shakespeare, Rilke, Berrigan, Toomer, Hayes, Hopkins, Sor Juana, Pessoa, and others. Given these poems, we might ask: what do sonnets do? What subjects do they gravitate toward? What makes this form so robust and versatile? A small "reader" has been uploaded on Canvas ( > Files > Sonnet > 129-sonnets.pdf ).

9/21: Essay 1 Discussion, Sonnet reader

Before class, take a look at the sonnets in the reader. Choose a sonnet to share in the #sonnet channel. You may give general impressions and write about its meter, rhyme, or line groupings. In class we'll talk about the discussion board posts and upcoming essay, and then talk about some of your chosen sonnets.

9/23: Sonnet reader (cont.)

Please post to #sonnet prior to class. If you have already posted a sonnet, post another one. We'll continue talking about sonnets today, identifying common topics, trends in historical development, and variations in form (rhyme, cross-linguistic meter, length, stanza structure). We'll also do some reading exercises with the short essays from Art of the Sonnet to practice extracting key ideas quickly from secondary texts.

9/25: Sonnet reader (cont.) Art of the Sonnet, Introduction (p. 5-25)

Prior to class, focus on finishing Essay 1. If you have time, read the introduction of Art of the Sonnet and peruse some of the short essays on individual sonnets. When you're done, read the given page range of Post-Petrarchism for Monday. In class, we will try to consolidate some of the observations we made in class on Wednesday with a lecture on the Early Modern sonnet and the function of the poetic conceit.

9/28: Sonnet reader (cont.) Post-Petrarchism, Introduction (p. 1-13)

Prior to class, read and take your own notes on ritual and fiction dimensions of a sonnet from the reader. We will discuss sonnets from the 19th century onward see how we can apply these concepts to various poems. We will also develop an understanding of how our previous discussions of line, meter, and conceit, relate to the two new terms.

Optional reading: "On the Margins of Discourse" by Barbara Herrnstein Smith. This is referenced in the definition of "fiction" in Greene's book and is a very clear, interesting read.

9/30: Sonnet reader (cont.), Post-Petrarchism, Chapter 1 (p. 22-27)

Choose a sonnet and think about how it uses deixis in an interesting manner. Bring your thoughts to class. We will see how we can apply deixis to various sonnets, and our focus will move beyond the individual poem to poems in sequences or groups.

10/2: Sonnet reader (cont.), Theory of the Lyric, Chapter 1 (p. 10-38)

Pay close attention to how the nine poems presented in the chapter are analyzed. Prior to class, choose a sonnet (or other poem); write a sentence or two in #post-petrarchism on how it involves deixis, ritual and fiction, and/or the four parameters (enunciative-apparatus, being-event, re-performance, hyperbolic-risk). Please do this by 21:00.

This week we pay closer attention to notions like "voice," "address," and "dialogue" in order to better understand these longer poems work. We will also continue to apply the concepts encountered last week: ritual, fiction, deixis, the four parameters, and ask ourselves which of these terms seem most helpful.

Oct 5 - John Ashbery, “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”

• Read p. 68-76 of the Ashbery poem.
• Then write a comment in #ashbery on a segment of the poem which felt particularly vivid, present, or clear to you and one which felt vague, abstract, or confusing. Does identifying deictics or finding instances of the four parameters at work change your understanding of that segment? Do this by 21:00 on Sunday.
• Optional: Larissa Macfarquhar, Present Waking Life: Becoming John Ashbery. A copy is on Canvas in case you hit a paywall. Helpful if you're having trouble with Ashbery.
• You may also want to refer to the Parmigianino painting referred to in the poem's title.

Oct 7 - Ashbery cont., Marianne Moore, “An Octopus”

• Read the rest of "Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror" (76-83).
• Begin reading "An Octopus." Add to #moore an excerpt from the poem that stands out to you as either especially compelling or especially confusing; connect it to one of the terms we've covered last week.
• In class, we'll continue talking about our affective responses to different parts of the poems and how the various terms covered last week can help us better understand these responses.
• Some clarifications on the nature of the "ode" will be addressed today.

Oct 9 - Marianne Moore, “An Octopus”, T.S. Eliot, “The Three Voices of Poetry”

• Finish "An Octopus."
• Read the Eliot essay.
• Read the markup guide, and apply it to a page of "The Three Voices." Post that page to #rhetoric with a few comments on what you found.
• In class we'll see if you can identify instances of the first, second, and/or third voices in either Ashbery or Moore. During class, add to #three-voices a quote from the Eliot essay alongside a segment from either of the poems where you feel one of the three voices is particularly salient.

Essay 2 “Ritual, Fiction” (Due 10/16, 22:00)

Revisions, if needed, are due on October 28.

In preparation for Essay 2, we'll work through some essays on the poems we read last week, or on the theoretical texts we previously read, searching for rhetorical strategies, argumentative structures, and sentence forms that we can use in our own writing.

Oct 12 - Ashbery + Moore

Pick one of the following articles to read and mark up. Reivew the markup guide for some directions on what to look for and how to do this. This time, focus on writing comments on sentence-to-sentence transitions within a paragraph, or broader commentary on the sequencing of paragraphs. Post to #rhetoric.

• I Was Reading and Rereading Ashbery's Self-Portrait for Many Years by Susan Stewart
• That's the Beauty of It, Or, Why John Ashbery is Not a Painter by Clark D. Lunberry
• "The Best Wild Music of the Forest:" Marianne Moore's "An Octopus of Ice" by Vicki Graham
• Rewriting Nature Tourism in "An Age of Violence": Tactical Collage in Marianne Moore's "An Octopus" by Jennifer K. Ladino
• The Road to Paradise: First Notes on Marianne Moore's "An Octopus" by Patricia C. Willis
• "Review: Theory of the Lyric by Jonathan Culler," by Marjorie Perloff

No classes on October 14. 🍂 Go play outside! 🍂

Oct 16 - Rest Day

In honor of fall break, and Essay 2, there is nothing to do for today.
We will watch and discuss Episode 1 from John Berger's Ways of Seeing.

Take the mid-term survey on Canvas. Please respond by Saturday at 10 pm.