POETRY: AN INTRODUCTION

Lit 355, Summer 2011 Office: 413 Cullimore Hall  Hours: Th, 12-1, 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)

REQUIRED TEXTS 

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

 See also:

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

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

Glossary of Terms and Definitions

The MLA Bibliography (at Rutgers' Dana Library)

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

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

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is meant to introduce students to the art and history of poetry (with special reference to poetry composed in English). All elements of poetry are considered systematcially in a step-by-step approach. In each class several poems are considered in-depth during open discussion. By the end of the course students are able to analyze a poem, showing how it works in order to create its overall “poetic” experience. The question of how a poem "means” (to echo John Ciardi's famous phrase) is central to the course, but the course does not merely pay attention to verse mechanics.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

* Midterm and Final examinations, comprehensive, essay in format. 
* Quizzes, unannounced. 
* Oral reports, two of them, one to be an analysis of an assigned poem, a second to be a discussion of the end-of-term paper (see below). 
* Two or three papers (documented attendance at two poetry events can be substituted for the second, thousand-word paper), the first to be of at least five hundred words, which analyzes a selected poem that has been covered in class, the second to be at least a thousand words on a poem specifically not covered in class or in the assigned reading (this paper assignment can be substituted by documented attendance at two poetry events), the third to be at least two thousand words (not including bibliography), which must be a researched, fully-documented, original, and critical work, employing at least three secondary sources (one of which must be hardcopy), and which must include at least some detailed analysis of poetry.  The topic for the third paper is open but must be approved ahead of time by and developed with me. 
* A Term Paper Announcement (see a sample TPA below, which can be used as a model).
* Attendance at two poetry events (unless the scheduled second, thousand-word paper is submitted). 
* 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 an absence. 
 

COURSE SCHEDULE *   n.b. THE BELOW DATES ARE NOT EXACT AT THIS TIME. THEY WILL BE CHANGED TO FIT THE 2011 CALENDAR BEFORE THE COURSE BEGINS.

5/24:    Introduction to the course.

5/26:    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. . . ."

5/27:    Nims pp. 18-41; Dickinson: "My Life Had Stood. . . ."; Chasin: "City Pigeons"; Yeats: "Leda and the Swan"; Auden: "Musée des Beaux Arts" (between pp. 422 and 423).

5/31:    Nims pp. 46-62, 67-84; Wyatt: "My Galley. . ."; Willliams: “Nantucket”; O’Hara: Why I Am Not . . .”; Collins: "The Death of Allegory"; Bishop: "Filling Station"; Shakespeare: “Sonnet 130”; Stevens: "Emperor of Ice Cream" (p. 86).

6/2:      Nims pp. 91-107, 115-37; Ransom: "Bells . . ."; Swenson: “Cat. . .”; Stafford: “Traveling. . . ”; Dickinson: "A Narrow . . ."; Tennyson: "Break. . ."; Frost: “Neither. . .”; Grossholz: “Remembering. . .”;   First paper due.

6/3:      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. . . .”

6/7:      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.”

6/9:      Nims pp. 230-50 (not “Essays”); Cummings: “if everything. . .”; Tate: “Miss Cho. . .”;  Hopkins: "The Windhover" (p. 428), "God's Grandeur" (p. 428). Submit a quatrain of iambic pentameter verse.

6/10:    MIDTERM EXAMINATION.

6/14:    Nims pp. 252-67, 273-88, 291-321; Roethke, "The Waking” (p. 471); Brooks: "Rites for Cousin Vit" and “We Real Cool”; Whitman: “I Hear . . .”; Lim: “Learning . . .”; Shakespeare, “Sonnet 29; Williams: “Dedication . . .” and "The Descent”; Oppen: “Psalm”; Levertov: “The Ache . . .” 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 due.

6/16:    Nims pp. 325-44; Cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town” (p. 458); Lux: "Cellar Stairs" (p. 534); Mueller, “Palindrome.”

6/17:    Shakespeare: "Sonnet 18"  (p. 374) and Sonnet 73" (p. 374); Hopkins: "The Windhover" (p. 428); Wyatt: "My Galley. . ."; Yeats: "Leda and the Swan."

            Second paper due.

6/21:    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); Marvell: “To His . . . “ (p. 390); Keats: “Od to a Nightingale”

            (pp. 405-06).

6/24:    Oral Reports on Term Research Paper. Course review.

6/28:    FINAL EXAMINATION.  Term research paper due.

 

* All assignments listed here must have been prepared prior to class meetings on due dates.  Poems cited below are to be read especially closely

 

COURSE GRADE

Class Participation, 5%

Quizzes, 5%

Original Quatrain of Iambic Pentameter, 5%

Oral Reports, (5% each) 10%

First Paper, 10% or if attending two poetry events  20%

Second Paper (if not attending two poetry events), 10%

Term Paper Announcement, 5%

End-of-Term Research Paper, 15%

Midterm Examination, 10%

Final Examination, 25%

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; 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 (beyond the 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. 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. 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.]