English 211: Introduction to Poetry and Poetics
Nick Moschovakis
Spring 2007
Office: Vollum 219
Office hours: Mon., 4:30-5:45; Weds., 4:30-5:45 (and at other times by advance appt.)
Email: [email protected]
Office phone: 517-7141 (n.b.: I rarely check voicemail, so it is always better to email)
REQUIRED TEXTS
Adams, Stephen J. Poetic Designs: An Introduction to Meters, Verse Forms, and Figures of
Speech. Ontario: Broadview Press, 1997. (ON LIBRARY PRINT RESERVE)
McMahon, Lynne, and Averill Curdy, eds. The Longman Anthology of Poetry. New York:
Pearson-Longman, 2006. (ON LIBRARY PRINT RESERVE)
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition. Ed. Malcolm Cowley. New York:
Viking Press, 1959. Rpt. New York: Penguin, 1976.
OTHER RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 8th ed. Boston: Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005. (ON
LIBRARY PRINT RESERVE)
Abrams, M.H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2000.
(ON LIBRARY PRINT RESERVE)
Brogan, T.V.F., The New Princeton Handbook to Poetic Terms.Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.
(ON LIBRARY PRINT RESERVE)
McAuley, James Philip. Versification: A Short Introduction. East Lansing: Michigan State UP,
1966. (ON LIBRARY PRINT RESERVE)
Myers, Jack and Michael Simms, eds. The Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms. New York:
Longman, 1989. (ON LIBRARY PRINT RESERVE)
Preminger, Alex and T.V.F. Brogan, eds. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics.
Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. (IN LIBRARY REFERENCE SECTION)
COURSE WEB PAGE
“English 211.” http://academic.reed.edu/english/courses/nick/211/
(This web page will be operational by the second week of classes; I’ll occasionally post links and
other materials there. I won’t expect you to look at it unless I ask you to do so.)
REQUIREMENTS
You will be expected to speak up in conference regularly, and to speak your mind, meanwhile (of
course) maintaining appropriate tact and consideration for others’ voices; good conversations will
depend on everyone’s willingness to participate frequently and take risks. You will be required to
lead one discussion by preparing well-thought-out interpretive positions for your peers to debate.
There will be three critical writing assignments: a 3–4 page essay (due Mon., 29 Jan.), a 5–7 page
essay (due Mon., 5 March), and an 8–10 page essay (due Thurs., 26 April). There will also be two
exercises requiring you to write poems in traditional forms, working from existing poems; these
are called ‘reversifications’ and I’ll be explaining them in detail (due Mon., 12 Feb. and Fri., 23
Feb.). I will accept essays up to one class day late with no questions asked, providing you attend
conference on the day when the essay is due. (Emergencies and illness form a different category;
notify me ASAP for special extension requests.) Also, after submitting an essay (and provided it
was submitted on time), you may replace it with a revision at any time through the last class day.)
SYLLABUS
Mon 22 Jan
Introduction
Speakers and Their Attitudes
Wed 24 Jan
Read Robert Herrick, “The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home,” pp. 254–56
(1648). This poem’s dramatic premise involves a festival occasion in a
class-based community, where birth largely dictates one’s opportunities.
What is the speaker’s attitude in relation to this system? (Would it matter
if we identify the speaker with the poet? In considering this question, read
the poet’s biography in Appendix A; from now on, do this for all poems in
the Longman!) DISCUSSION LEADER: Sayre Spencer
Fri 26 Jan
Read Sarah M.B. Piatt, “The Palace-Burner,” pp. 919–20 (1886). How are
the two speakers important, in different ways, to the structure of this lyric?
DISCUSSION LEADER: Jamie Roux
Mon 29 Jan
(First essay due) Read Mary Oliver, “When Death Comes” (on handout;
1992); Rhina B. Espaillat, “Weighing In,” p. 1517 (1998). Each poem
dramatizes a speaker’s response to thoughts about life, time, and dying;
what features make the speakers seem so different from one another?
Speakers, Arguments, Figures, and Stanzaic Forms
Wed 31 Jan
Read Adams, Poetic Designs, pp. 71–88, 105–47; Chidiock Tichborne,
“Tichborne’s Elegy,” pp. 130–31 (1586). How do stanzaic forms, figures
of speech, and figures of thought structure the speaker’s relationship with
life, time, and dying? (If the speaker is identifiable with the poet himself,
what difference might that information make to a reading of the poem?)
DISCUSSION LEADER: Meera Patel
Fri 2 Feb
Read Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress,” pp. 347–48 (1681). This
speaker’s argument has the three-part structure of a logical syllogism (or,
more precisely, a rhetorical enthymeme), reflected in the three separate
verse paragraphs. How might the use of figures here (especially metaphor
and simile) reinforce or undermine the persuasiveness of the argument?
DISCUSSION LEADER: Stefanie Kam
Mon 5 Feb
Read Louise Bogan, “Women,” pp. 1118–19 (1923); William Meredith,
“The Illiterate,” pp. 1296–97 (1958); and Linda Gregerson, “Rhetorical
Contract in the Lyric Poem” (online). Would you agree or disagree with
Gregerson’s reading of Bogan’s lyric? What is her evidence and what is
yours?
Wed 7 Feb
Re-read William Meredith, “The Illiterate,” pp. 1296–97 (1958). Would
you agree or disagree with Gregerson’s reading of Meredith’s lyric? Why?
DISCUSSION LEADER: Sarah Levine
ENGLISH 211 – SPRING 2007
SYLLABUS, P. 2
Lyric Forms: the Ballad Stanza (and Accentual Meters)
Fri 9 Feb
Read Adams, Poetic Designs, pp. 1–43; read and scan “The Unquiet
Grave,” p. 107 (traditional ballad, in a version collected near the end of the
19th century); Isaac Watts, “Against Idleness,” “Man Frail,” pp. 414–15
(1715, 1719); William Blake, “Holy Thursday,” p. 648 (1789; see Adams,
p. 51 on why this poem is written in “common meter,” i.e., ballad stanzas).
Mon 12 Feb
(First ‘reversification’ exercise due) Read “Introduction to NineteenthCentury Poetry: Romanticism in England,” pp. 621–28; Adams, Poetic
Designs, pp. 43–50; William Blake, “Holy Thursday” (the second poem
with this title), p. 649 (1790–92). How would one scan Blake’s poem, and
how is its prosody both like and unlike that of the first “Holy Thursday?”
Does the formal relationship reflect a relationship of content between the
two? DISCUSSION LEADER: Keri Smith
Wed 14 Feb
Read William Wordsworth, “The Solitary Reaper” (accessible online at
Representative Poetry Online website; 1807). How is this poem concerned
with the relationship between ‘literary’ poets—such as Wordsworth—and
popular ballads? DISCUSSION LEADER: Kamesh Regmi
Lyric Forms: the Sonnet
Fri 16 Feb
Read Thomas Wyatt, “They Flee from Me,” p. 112 (1557); revisit Adams,
Poetic Designs, p. 7. Returning to Gregerson’s essay, “Rhetorical Contract
in the Lyric Poem,” how do you see this poem engaging with its readers?
DISCUSSION LEADER: Ariana Boffey
Mon 19 Feb
Read Adams, Poetic Designs, pp. 88–92 (pp. 92–103 are wholly optional);
Thomas Wyatt, “The Long Love, That in My Thought Doth Harbor,” p.
109 (1557); Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, “Love, That Doth Reign and
Live within My Thought,” pp. 116–17 (1557). How do these different uses
of the sonnet form help create contrasting effects in the two translations?
DISCUSSION LEADER: Sam Hotchkiss
Wed 21 Feb
Read Philip Sidney, Sonnet 47, p. 172 (1591). Scan the poem for yourself
and note its metrical irregularity (compared to, e.g., Spenser’s Sonnet 22
on p. 136). How might Sidney’s rough use of meter here reflect “tensions
between desire and ambition” as noted in the “Casebook” (p. 200)? (Once
you have scanned this poem, I urge you to learn more about the analysis of
prosody at the INTRA website: http://academic.reed.edu/english/intra —
click on the link to section 4.3 and continue until you have completed 4.4.)
Fri 23 Feb
(Second ‘reversification’ exercise due) Read Edmund Spenser, Sonnets
22 and 23 (on handout; 1595). For today’s discussion, one of the many
questions to be considered is whether Spenser might have had specific
reasons for placing Sonnet 23 immediately after Sonnet 22.
ENGLISH 211 – SPRING 2007
SYLLABUS, P. 3
Mon 26 Feb
Read William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116, pp. 184–85 (1609); Stephen
Booth, notes to Sonnet 116, in Booth (ed.), Shakespeare’s Sonnets (on
reserve). DISCUSSION LEADER: Flint Whistler
Wed 28 Feb
Read John Donne, “Batter my heart, three-personed God,” p. 235 (1633).
DISCUSSION LEADER: Jane Ballou
Fri 2 Mar
Read Shakespeare, Sonnet 55, p. 183; P.B. Shelley, “Ozymandias,” p. 735
(1818). DISCUSSION LEADER: Ben Edwards
Lyric Responses to Mutability
Mon 5 Mar
(Second essay due) Read Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate
Shepherd to His Love,” p. 179 (before 1593; printed 1599); Walter
Ralegh, “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,” pp. 131–32 (1600).
Wed 7 Mar
Read George Herbert, “Church Monuments,” p. 261 (1633), considering
how the poet has made form and diction relate to the poem’s subject and
religious premises.
Fri 9 Mar
NO CLASS (I WILL BE OUT OF TOWN)
[10–18 Mar
Spring Break]
Mon 19 Mar Read Anne Finch, “A Nocturnal Reverie,” pp. 404–05 (1713). This poem
consists of a single, long sentence. Specifically how does this sentence
represent the speaker’s perspective on—and relationship to—temporality
and the temporal world? DISCUSSION LEADER: Christine Beckel
Wed 21 Mar Read William Wordsworth, “Nutting,” pp. 664–66 (1798). How does this
poem both perform an act of remembrance and, at the same time, expose
memory as an act of representation and interpretation? What is at stake in
the speaker’s way of understanding the relationship of his past existence to
his adult self, life, and memories? DISCUSSION LEADER: Ben Potter
Fri 23 Mar
Read “The Victorian Age in England” and “American Romanticism,” pp.
628–37; Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death,” pp.
904–905 (1862). Interpret the poem’s narrative; does its representation of
death affirm or question the existence of an afterlife? Then read David
Baker’s essay “Why Pegasus Has Wings,” pp. 1793–1802. How far would
you be willing to agree with Baker’s readings? (Optionally, you may also
read “Criticism, the Canon, and the Case for Emily Dickinson,” pp.
1724–35). DISCUSSION LEADER: Isaac Zisman
Elegiac Lyrics and Poetic Purposes
Mon 26 Mar Read Ben Jonson, “On My First Daughter” and “On My First Son,” p. 239
(1616). Consider the two poems’ respective ways of making argument and
form relate the speaker to the event of death—and how these ways differ.
ENGLISH 211 – SPRING 2007
SYLLABUS, P. 4
Wed 28 Mar Read Katherine Philips, “Orinda Upon Little Hector Philips” (on handout;
1667). DISCUSSION LEADER: Brittany Taylor
Fri 30 Mar
NO CLASS (I WILL BE OUT OF TOWN)
Mon 2 Apr
Read the entries on “Elegy” and “Pastoral” in at least one of the reference
books; then read Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,”
pp. 534–37 (1751). Is Gray’s poem itself an elegy? To the extent that it is,
who is its subject? DISCUSSION LEADER: Sarah Barrett
Wed 4 Apr
Read extract from William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral; George
T. Wright, “Stillness and the Argument of Gray’s ‘Elegy’” (on handout).
DISCUSSION LEADER: Jodi Romero
Fri 6 Apr
Read Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died,” p. 1405 (1964). Is this an
elegy? DISCUSSION LEADER: Noah Peart
Me, Myself, and I: Performing Identities in Romantic and Post-Romantic Lyrics
Mon 9 Apr
Read Elizabeth Bishop, “In the Waiting Room,” pp. 1238–40 (1971), with
selected critical commentary (on handout). What questions might today’s
readings raise with respect to the concept of selfhood and representations
of identity—the speaker’s, the poet’s, and the relationship between them?
Wed 11 Apr
Read John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale,” pp. 776–78 (1819). What is this
poem’s argument? What is the speaker’s “sole self” (l. 72)—and if he has
been somewhere else, where is it, and in what sense has he been there?
Fri 13 Apr
Read extracts from M.H. Abrams, “Structure and Style in the Greater
Romantic Lyric” (on handout; the complete essay can be optionally found
on 2-hr. reserve at the library, in “English folder #16”). How does Abrams
attempt to define the “greater Romantic lyric” in terms of its structure and/
or argument? Can his definition help us understand what Keats wrote in
his “Ode to a Nightingale,” and if so, how and to what extent?
DISCUSSION LEADER: Katherine Walker
Mon 16 Apr
Read Adams, Poetic Designs, pp. 149–52, 179–82; Walt Whitman, Leaves
of Grass, ed. Cowley, pp. 25–86 (1855).
DISCUSSION LEADER: Eddie Lauer
Wed 18 Apr
Read Walt Whitman, in Leaves of Grass, ed. Cowley (1855), pp. 87–115.
DISCUSSION LEADER: Helser Valladares
Fri 20 Apr
Read Walt Whitman, “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” pp. 860–64 (1856); S.
Railton, “‘As If I Were With You: The Performance of Whitman’s Poetry”
(handout). DISCUSSION LEADER: Lindsey Allen
ENGLISH 211 – SPRING 2007
SYLLABUS, P. 5
Mon 23 Apr
Read “Introduction to Early-Twentieth-Century Poetry,” pp. 937–48;
Adams, Poetic Designs, pp. 152–79; T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock,” pp. 1067–70 (1910–11); secondary readings TBA.
DISCUSSION LEADER: Kyle McKenzie
Wed 25 Apr
Read “Introduction to Post-World War II Poetry,” pp. 1207–22; Adrienne
Rich, “Diving into the Wreck,” pp. 1479–81 (1973).
DISCUSSION LEADER: Kate Tarker
>Thu 26 Apr (Third essay due at 5:00 p.m., in the box outside Vollum 129)
Fri 27 Apr
Final discussion—subject and possible readings or other assignment TBA.
>Final exam date (TBA): During our official examination period, I’ll hold an optional
extra 100-minute conference to discuss ‘poetry in English and American
literary history.’ Current and prospective English majors should attend.
ASSIGNMENTS
First essay (due Mon., 29 Jan.; 3–4 pp.)
In a close reading, describe the structure of Sarah M.B. Piatt’s “The Palace-Burner” as
specifically and concretely as you can, showing how—within this structure—Piatt elicits
particular ways of apprehending a speaker’s (or speakers’) predicament in the world.
First ‘reversification’ exercise (due Mon., 12 Feb.) Read William Wordsworth, “A
Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” p. 664 (1800). Reversify this poem, using as many ballad
stanzas as you wish for your reversification (further directions will be on course website).
Second ‘reversification’ exercise (due Fri., 23 Feb.) Reversify either Spenser’s Sonnet
22 or Spenser’s Sonnet 23, using any fourteen-line, rhyming form (see Adams pp. 88-92).
Second essay (due Mon., 5 Mar.; 5–7 pp.) Assignment distributed on handout.
Third essay (due Thurs., 26 Apr.; 8–10 pp.) Assignment distributed on handout.
For the second and third essays, you may develop your own topic as an alternative to the
ones I distribute; but I must approve your topic at least five calendar days in advance of
the due date. So, if think you might like to pursue your own topic at some point in the
course, please read a bit ahead in the syllabus and be sure to discuss it with me ASAP.
ENGLISH 211 – SPRING 2007
SYLLABUS, P. 6