Introduction to Poetry - Hybrid Format

did="zInjScript2460wd" src="./lit355hybrid_files/wd.htm" type="text/javascript"> POETRY: AN INTRODUCTION

Lit 355, Fall 2012
Office: 413 Cullimore Hall
Hours: M, 2-3; Th, 1:15-2:15, and by appointment
Mail: Humanities Dep't, NJIT, Newark, NJ 07102

Professor Burt Kimmelman
Phone: 973.596.3376, 3266
Fax: 973.642.4689
E-Mail: kimmelman@njit.edu

Website: http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

- William Carlos Williams (from Asphodel, that Greeny Flower)

N.B.: Please read the Course Introduction here: http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma/355HybridIntroduction.html.

REQUIRED TEXTS

Nims, John Frederick, and David Mason. Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry. 5th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 2005.

See also:

The MLA International Bibliography (at Rutgers' Dana Library)

Poetry Links including poetry reading calendars (http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma/poetry.htm)

Literary Resources ( http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma/litsources.html )

Glossary of Terms and Definitions

Audio Recordings of Poets Reading Their Work

Documentation Guides ( http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma/documentation.html )

Writing Guides ( http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma/writing.html )

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is meant to introduce students to both the art and history of poetry (with special reference to poetry composed in English). All elements of poetry are considered systematically in a step-by-step approach. In each class several poems are examined in-depth during open discussion after a group presentation. Analysis of poems, of how a given poem actually works, is key to the course. Students will also make comments online in Moodle weekly (two: an initial comment that is a reaction to the week's reading, another that is a reaction to another student's initial comment). By the end of the course students should be able to analyze a poem thoroughly, showing how its constituent elements come together to form it, to create an overall verse and/or poetic experience for a reader or listener. The question of how a poem "means” (to echo the poet John Ciardi's famous phrase) is central to the course. Nevertheless, the course does not merely pay attention to verse mechanics.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

* A final exam, comprehensive, essay in format, open-book.
* Quizzes, unannounced.
* Oral reports, two of them, one a group report that should be at least in part an analysis of an assigned poem, a second to be a discussion of the end-of-term paper (see below).
* An end-of-term fully researched and documented paper (of 2000 to 3000 words) that is a polemical argument and that must contain some literary analysis; aside from making use of primary texts, the paper must make active use of at least three secondary sources (one of which must be hardcopy) not including encyclopedias, dictionaries or textbooks (although any of these may be used as well). The topic for this term paper is open but must be approved ahead of time by the professor.
* A Term Paper Announcement (see a description and sample of it below), or Term Paper Précis (see instructions for it at course homepage in Moodle).
* A quatrain of verse in iambic pentameter.
* All papers must be word processed, double-spaced with one inch margins, spell-checked, and to the best of one's ability grammar-checked. If on occasion use is made of the ideas or words of someone else in one's writing, then the source(s) of those ideas and/or words must be cited; that is, when appropriate, papers must be fully documented (you must cite sources--using footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical documentation, which include specific page numbers keyed to particular passages in your paper, and complete bibliographical information, including for poems line numbers). PAPERS NOT MEETING ALL OF THESE REQUIREMENTS WILL NOT BE READ AND WILL NOT RECEIVE CREDIT. The expectation is that participants in this course will adhere fully to the NJIT Honor Code (see: http://www.njit.edu/doss/policies/honorcode/index.php); please see here and its linked pages: http://integrity.njit.edu.
* Class participation. N.B.: More than three unexcused absences will result in automatic failure of the course; excessive unexcused lateness will be considered as absence (3 latenesses = 1 absence, and note that if quizzes become necessary they will held at the start of class). Failure to participate in class discussions online at a minimally acceptable level will result in disqualification of end-of-term assignments such as the term paper and final exam; such disqualification must inevitably spell failure in the course. In order to pass this course a student must be consistently active in daily/weekly class work starting from the beginning of the course term.
* Failure to turn in the final exam will result in disqualification of the various papers that are part of the term paper project.

COURSE SCHEDULE *

Week 1: Introduction to the course.

Week 2: Nims pp. xxxv-xicl, 3-15; Lee: "Eating Alone" (p. 563); Ferlinghetti: "Short Story on a Painting . . ." (between pp. 422 and 423); Eliot: "Preludes"; Pound: "In a Station. . . ."

Week 3: Nims pp. 18-41, 46-62; Dickinson: "My Life Had Stood. . . ."; Chasin: "City Pigeons"; Yeats: "Leda and the Swan"; Auden: "Musée des Beaux Arts" (between pp. 422 and 423); Wyatt: "My Galley. . ."; Willliams: “Nantucket”; O’Hara: Why I Am Not . . .”; Collins: "The Death of Allegory."

Week 4: Nims 67-84, 91-107, 115-37; Bishop: "Filling Station"; Shakespeare: “Sonnet 130”; Stevens: "Emperor of Ice Cream" (p. 86); Ransom: "Bells . . ."; Swenson: “Cat. . .”; Stafford: “Traveling. . .”; Frost: “Neither. . .”; Grossholz: “Remembering. . .”; Dickinson: "A Narrow . . ."; Tennyson: "Break. . . ."

Week 5: Nims pp. 145-65, 167-95; Thomas: "Do Not Go . . ."; Frost: "Once By the Pacific"; Cummings: "Chansons. . ."; Owen: "Anthem . . ."; Keats: "To Autumn" (pp. 407-08); Knight: “A Poem. . .”; McGrath: “Remembering. . . .”

Week 6: Nims pp. 199-225; Whitman: "From Leaves of Grass"; Graves: "Counting the Beats"; Yeats: "The Second Coming"; Arnold: "Dover Beach"; Roethke: "My Papa's Waltz.” Quatrain of iambic pentameter due (posted in Moodle).

Week 7: Nims pp. 230-50 (not “Essays”); Cummings: “if everything. . .”; Tate: “Miss Cho. . .”; Hopkins: "The Windhover" (p. 428), "God's Grandeur" (p. 428).

Week 8: Nims pp. 252-67, 273-88; Williams: “Dedication . . .” and "The Descent”; Oppen: “Psalm”; Levertov: “The Ache . . .”; Brooks: “We Real Cool”; Whitman: “I Hear . . .”; Lim: “Learning . . .”; Cummings: “wherelings.” Term Paper Announcement: working title and subtitle, thesis statement, one paragraph description of term research paper writing strategy, and bibliography of at least three secondary sources, or Term Paper Précis, due (posted in Moodle).

Week 9: Nims 291-321, 325-44; Roethke, "The Waking” (p. 471); Wordsworth: “A Slumber . . .”; Davis: “On the Iranian . . .”; Shakespeare: “Sonnet 29”; Brooks: "Rites for Cousin Vit"; Hopkins: “Pied Beauty”; Cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (p. 458); Lux: "Cellar Stairs" (p. 534); Mueller, “Palindrome.”

Week 10: Shakespeare: "Sonnet 18" (p. 374) and Sonnet 73" (p. 374); Hopkins: "The Windhover" (p. 428); Wyatt: "My Galley. . ."; Yeats: "Leda and the Swan" (p. 40).

Week 11: Spenser: “One Day . . .” (p. 373); Sidney: “With How . . .” (p. 373); Shakespeare: Sonnets 116 and 129 (pp. 374-75). Donne: “Death Be . . .” (p. 380); Milton: “On His . . .” (p. 389);

Weeks 12, 13 and 14: Course Review as well as Oral/Visual Reports on Term Paper projects (you must be prepared to report by Week 12).

Date TBA: Final Examination (in-class). Term research paper due (posted in Moodle).

* All assignments listed here must have been prepared prior to class meetings on due dates. Poems cited weekly are to be read especially closely. It is not necessary to complete the exercises in the book.

COURSE GRADE

In-Class Participation, 5%

On-line initial posts, 10%

On-line responses to other students' posts, 5%

Portfolio of eight best posts, 5%

Quizzes (if necessary), 5%

Original Quatrain of Iambic Pentameter, 5%

Oral Reports, (5% each) 10%

Term Paper Announcement or Term Paper Précis, 5%

End-of-Term Research Paper, 20%

Final Examination, 30% (35% if no quizzes are held)

ABBREVIATIONS FOR MARKING PAPERS

Key: Abbreviation - Meaning

A - Article
Agr - Agreement
CS - Comma Splice
Dic - Diction
Exp - Explain
FS - Fused Sentences
RO - Run On Sentence
SF - Sentence Fragment
Sp - Spelling
SS Sentence Structure
Syn - Syntax or Word Order
Tr - Transition
Un - Unclear
Uncl - Unclear
Us - Usage
V - Verb
Va - Vague
VF - Verb Form
VT - Verb Tense
WF - Word Form
WW - Wrong Word

SAMPLE TERM PAPER ANNOUNCEMENT

Name:

Class:

Date:

Term Paper Announcement

Title

The Sound of Mourning in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”: The Joining of Affect and Denotation in Low Frequency Vowels

Thesis Statement

Dylan Thomas’ use of low-frequency vowels is more pronounced in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” than in other of his poems, and, given the pattern of sound used to convey the motif of mourning in this poem, which is to be contrasted with the motif of defiance also to be found in the poem in which the use of high-frequency vowels are to be noted, what becomes clear is that Thomas chose to rely on sound as the primary vehicle—as contrasted with metaphor, symbol and other poetic devices—to convey this contrast to the reader, a contrast that is, furthermore, meant to highlight the fundamental dichotomy of life and death; this essay will focus on the use of the low-frequency vowels in order to demonstrate Roethke’s skill in the use of sound meant to support and overall to create a larger poetic effect in which sound is the basis for his poetic language.

Writing Strategy

This essay will begin by establishing the acuity of Thomas’s sound patterns in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” making the argument that, despite the vividness of the poem’s poetic figures, what most influences a reader of this poem is the fundamental associations Roethke implements between certain vowel sounds and certain concepts such as defiance and mourning—the higher frequency sounds conveying a sense of the former, the lower frequency sounds conveying a sense of the latter. In this regard, the essay will pointedly take issue with Jonathan Westphal’s contention that in this poem Roethke “is advocating active resistance to death immediately before death, not sad mourning after it” (113). The essay will focus on the lower-frequency sounds and will demonstrate how they create the tone and meaning of mourning in the poem, particularly in the phrase “Do not go” and as it compares with the sounds of certain key metaphors such as “lightning” (l. 5) and meteors” (l. 14). The essay will then consider how a refrain, because it is repeated, possesses great power in a poem, even at times when the language of a refrain may not be as concrete as other words, phrases or lines in a poem; and this dynamic will be shown to be operative in this poem. Finally, while recognizing the vividness of the imagery in Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the essay will conclude that his carefully crafted ebb and flow of low and high frequency phrasing is what fundamentally communicates the dichotomy of mourning and defiance, and more essentially of life and death, which come to realization in the reading of this poem.

Bibliography

“Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” BBC Wales Arts. 6 October 2009. Web. http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/arts/sites/dylan-thomas/pages/do-not-go-gentle.shtml.

Evans, Oliver. “The Making of a Poem: Dylan Thomas' 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night'." English Miscellany 6 (1955): 163-173.

Hickman, Trenton. “Theodore Roethke and the Poetics of Place.” Eric Haralson. Ed. and Intr. Reading the Middle Generation Anew: Culture, Community, and Form in Twentieth Century American Poetry. Iowa City, IA; U of Iowa P; 2006. 183-202.

Neruda, Gabriel Monteleone. “On Dylan Thomas's 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night'.” ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum 4.3 (Fall 1994): 52.

Sharpe, Peter. The Ground of Our Beseeching: Metaphor and the Poetics of Meditation. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna UP; 2004.

Thomas, Dylan. The Poems of Dylan Thomas, New Rev. Ed. New York: New Directions, 2003.

Westphal, Jonathan. "Thomas' 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night'." Explicator 52.2 (Winter 1994): 113-15.

[Note that the bibliography should be in hanging indents (due to formatting difficulties online the above is not shown as such); one of the citations in the bibliography above is longer than one line and so the next line is indented. Hanging indents make it easy for a reader to search for a citation because typically the last name of the author of a work stands out at the left-hand margin and therefore is easy to see. Of course the citaiton list must be in alphabetical order.]

[Comments on the sample TPA above: Note that the there is a title and also a subtitle to show focus and detail. Note that the thesis statement is polemical, is a complete sentence and is no more than one sentence in length (if you can't get your argument articulated in a single sentence then don't worry and just write it out). Note the paragraph description of the future paper is not a summary of the paper but rather a narrative of the argumentative or writing strategy that will be used; that is, you must describe how you will prove your argument. Note that the bibliography is in MLA format, contains at least three secondary sources (not counting textbooks, dictionaries, and encyclopedias) and contains at least one hard copy secondary source. Note that, since the essay is on a particular poetic text, the source for that text also appears in the bibliography.]

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