2/5/14
Bryant, AML 4242 (sec. 1D29)
MODERN AMERICAN POETRY
Time & Place: T Per. 4, R Pers. 4-5 in TUR 2305
Office: 4360 TUR
Office Hours: T Per. 5, W Per. 7, and by appointment
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: people.clas.ufl.edu/mbryant
Spring 2014
This course takes an in-depth look at poems by Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot, William Carlos
Williams, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, and Billy Collins. Besides
considering their interplay of traditional vs. innovative forms, we will focus on the poetry’s relationships to the
natural world, domesticity, and the city, and visual culture. In addition, we will consider poetry’s public roles in
the United States. Course assignments are: reading quizzes, a short paper, a panel presentation, a parody, and a
term paper keyed to the Harn Museum Exhibit “Private Dramas, Public Dreams: The Street Photographs of
Helen Levitt & Friends.” Engaged participation in discussion is also part of our class work. This course will
sharpen your skills in literary analysis and offer strategies for writing more clearly and effectively. I look
forward to discussing the poetry with you!
BOOK LIST*
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken: A Selection of Robert Frost’s Poems (Holt, not the short Dover edition)
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (Dover)
T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems, ed. Vendler (Signet)
Langston Hughes, Selected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage)
William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems (New Directions)
Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems (Harper)
Allen Ginsberg, Howl & Other Poems (City Lights)
Sylvia Plath, Ariel: The Restored Edition (Harper)
Billy Collins, Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House)
*Some of these are available as e-texts. Alternate editions of Eliot and Stein are ok.
Recommended Resource:
Modern American Poetry Site (MAPS) for background and criticism: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/
ASSIGNMENTS
15% - Reading Quizzes (1-2 a week)
15% - Class Participation
10% - Panel Presentation
20% - Close Reading Paper (4-5 pages)
30% - Poetry/Museum Project (9-10 pages)
10% - Parody
POLICIES
1. You must complete all assignments to receive credit for this course.
2. Attendance: Like all lecture-discussion courses, this one needs you! Use your allotted absences wisely
(for emergencies, serious illness) as you would for any job. You will fail the course if you accrue 6
absences. You will earn a lowered course grade if you accrue 4 absences. Note that missing a double
Thursday session counts as 2 absences.
3. You do not need to tell me why you are absent unless you have a medical condition that will use up
more than your 3 allotted absences. At that point, you should contact me and provide documentation.
4. If you are absent, you are still responsible for knowing the material and for turning in any assignments
due that day.
5. Cell Phones, laptops, tablets, and other electronic devices must be silent. Stow them before class
begins—unless you are using an electronic edition of a textbook and show me.
6. Latecomers receive partial absences, and must see me after class so I know you attended.
7. Reading Quizzes cannot be made up, but I will drop your 2 lowest quiz scores.
8. Paper Format: Please put your e-mail address on the front page of your paper, number pages, and make
sure the printout is easy to read. Use this format: 12 point font, 1-inch margins, double spacing,
numbered pages. Grammatical errors will cost you, so proofread.
9. Submitting Papers: Your papers are due in class and on Sakai on the assigned days (if you are absent,
your paper should be in my Department mailbox when I return from class). Late papers and panel
statements earn grade reductions; papers submitted a week late earn an "E."
10. Save That Paper! Always make backup copies of your work so it arrives on time. Also, save the graded
work I return to you in case you ever request a letter of recommendation, which requires at least three
weeks’ notice. I cannot write a reference letter without the comments I made on your work.
11. Participation: The quality and frequency of your contributions determine your participation grade.
Learning to participate effectively and to move the conversation forward will help you understand the
poetry and develop important professional skills. If you’re shy about offering opinions, try asking
questions. Remember that if you are confused about a text, others are, too! Panels will help you feel
more comfortable addressing the class.
12. Students requesting classroom accommodation must first register with the Dean of Students Office,
which will provide documentation for you to give me when requesting accommodation.
13. For information on UF Grading policies, see:
https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/regulations/info/grades.aspx
PANELS
Each of you will participate in one class panel. This requires preparing a one-page, double-spaced statement in
response to your topic (see below). While the page limit inhibits full development of your ideas, you will have
the opportunity to clarify your opinion during panel discussion. Follow this procedure so your panel runs
smoothly: (1) I’ll send your panel an e-mail reminder. (2) Panelists distribute their statements to one another
and to me by “replying all” to the email by 10:00 a.m. on the day before the panel, using “doc” or RTF format.
(3) Do not get together before class, but be prepared to comment on each other’s statements. (4) In class, the
panel will begin with each of you reading your statement. (5) Next, panelists will ask each other questions and
may amplify their own views. (6) Finally, the rest of the class will pose questions and comments.
SYLLABUS (Thursdays, marked R, are double-period classes)
Date
Reading Assignment
T 1/7
Introduction; Frost: “The Road Not Taken”
R 1/9
Frost: “Storm Fear,” “To the Thawing Wind,” “The Tuft of Flowers,” “The Wood-Pile,”
“An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Birches,”
“Two Tramps in Mud Time,” “After Apple-Picking,” “Mending Wall”; panel sign-up
T 1/14
Frost: “Home Burial,” “The Death of the Hired Man”
R 1/16
Frost: “The Witch of Coös,” “Range-Finding,” “Out, Out,” “The Oven Bird,”
“Acquainted with the Night,” “Design,” “Fire and Ice,” “Departmental,” “The Gift
Outright”
T 1/21
Stein: Tender Buttons, “Objects”
R 1/23
Stein: Tender Buttons, “Food,” “Rooms”
T 1/28
Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Hysteria”
R 1/30
“Preludes”; The Waste Land 1-3
T 2/4
Eliot: 3-5
R 2/6
Eliot: The Waste Land; Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Negro,” “Spirituals,”
“The Weary Blues,” “Old Walt,” “Mulatto,” “Silhouette,” “The South,” “Migrant,”
“Mother to Son,” “Note on Commercial Theatre”
DUE
Panel 1
Panel 2
Panel 3
T 2/11
R 2/13
T 2/18
R 2/20
T 2/25
R 2/27
3/4, 3/6
T 3/11
R 3/13
T 3/18
R 3/20
T 3/25
R 3/27
T 4/1
R 4/3
T 4/8
R 4/10
T 4/15
R 4/17
*F 4/18
T 4/22
TBA
Library Session: meet in 1A, 1st floor, Smathers Library East
Meet in the lobby of The Harn Museum of Art www.harn.ufl.edu; Hughes: “AfroAmerican Fragment” + photography essay TBA
Hughes – “Trumpet Player,” “Young Gal’s Blues,” “Sylvester’s Dying Bed,” “Hard
Daddy” + Montage of A Dream Deferred (Dream Boogie” thru “Situation”)
Hughes: Finish Montage
Williams: “Pastoral” (When I was younger…), “Apology,” “Pastoral” (The little
sparrows…), “Tract,” “El Hombre,” “The Great Figure”
Williams: “To Waken an Old Lady,” “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” “Spring
and All,” “The Eyeglasses,” “To Elsie,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “At the Ball Game,”
“The Sun Bathers,” “The Attic Which Is Desire,” “This Is Just to Say,” “To a Poor Old
Woman,” “Proletarian Portrait,” “The Term,” “The Poor,” “A Portrait of the Times”
NO CLASS: UF SPRING BREAK (but feel free to take poetry with you!)
Williams: “Flowers by the Sea,” “A Sort of a Song,” “The Dance,” “The Poem,” “The
Bitter World of Spring,” “The Sound of Waves,” “The Pink Locust”
Brooks - “kitchenette building,” “the mother,” “the ballad of Chocolate Mabbie,” “Sadie
and Maud” “Of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery,” “What shall I give
my children? who are poor,” “First fight. Then fiddle,” “the rites for Cousin Vit”
(Carried her unprotesting out the door), “I love those little booths at Benvenuti’s,”
“Beverly Hills, Chicago,” “The Lovers of the Poor,” “The Bean Eaters,” “Mrs. Small”
Brooks - “We Real Cool,” “The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith”
Brooks: “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi
Mother Burns Bacon,” “The Last Quatrain in the Ballad of Emmett Till,” The Chicago
Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock”; Ginsberg: “A Supermarket in California,”
“Sunflower Sutra,” “In the Baggage Room at the Greyhound,” Howl parts 1-2
Ginsberg: finish Howl (including “Footnote”)
Class Activity for Period 4 or 5: Go to the display case next to the Circulation Desk in
Smathers Library West, where find an exhibit on Failure that includes William Carlos
Williams. Explore the exhibit and email me an informal, 1-paragraph response by 6 p.m.
This will count for your attendance & participation. (I’ll be at the MRG conference.)
NOTE: Williams’s poem “Paterson: The Falls” distills his plan for his long epic,
Paterson, which appears in the Failure exhibit; it is in Selected Poems.
Ginsberg : “America”
Plath: – Morning Song,” “You’re,” “The Moon and the Yew Tree,” “Medusa,”
“Daddy” “The Rabbit Catcher,” “The Applicant,” “Cut,” “Lesbos,” “Purdah, ” “The
Jailer”
Plath: “Lady Lazarus,” “Ariel,” “Fever 103 ”
Plath: “The Bee Meeting,” “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” “Stings,” “Wintering”;
Collins: “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House,” “The Lesson,”
“Advice to Writers,” “The Rival Poet,” “Introduction to Poetry”
Collins: “American Sonnet,” “Forgetfulness,” “The Dead,” “The Man in the Moon,”
“First Reader,” “Purity”
BRING Your LAPTOP Day; Collins: “Osso Buco” “The Best Cigarette,” “Workshop,”
“Pinup,” “The Blues,” “Marginalia,” “Victoria’s Secret,” “Man Listening to Disc,”
“Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes,” “Splitting Wood”
*Paper 2 for Collins Panelists due by 4:30 in my Dept. mailbox and on Sakai*
Parody performances (not required, but strongly encouraged)
**Term Paper Pickup in my office during Exam Week**
Please remember to request reference letters 3 weeks in advance.
PANEL TOPICS:
Paper 1
Panel 4
Panel 5
Panel 6
Panel 7
Panel 8
Panel 9
Paper 2*
Parody
(note that all topics require at least 2 precise examples to support your opinion)
1. Frost. Which character do you think Frost intended to be more sympathetic in “Home Burial”: the
husband or the wife? Why?
2. Stein. What does Stein risk with her experimental style in “Objects,” and what does she gain? Do you
think Stein intends to make some kind of commentary through this unprecedented style, or does she
mostly aim to be playful (or even nonsensical)?
3. Eliot. Women prove crucial to Eliot’s portrayals of modern metropolis in The Waste Land. Thus far
you’ve encountered ‘the hyacinth girl,’ Madame Sosostris, the lady on the ‘burnished throne,’ the
nervous woman, Lil (by hearsay), the typist, the woman who fiddles her hair. Choosing 2 of these (but
only 1 from Part 1), decide if women in The Waste Land function primarily as symbols of fertility,
decay, vulnerability, corruption, or something else.
4. Hughes. Montage of a Dream Deferred depicts Harlem’s complex dynamic as cultural center and
economic margin. Which aspect does Hughes stress through the poem’s allusions to jazz and blues?
Overall, does the music motif suggest that Harlem’s dream will emerge or remain deferred?
5. Williams. Although she is the title figure of “To Elsie,” Williams renders his female character as an
emblem of America. What does Williams most risk and gain from making Elsie emblematic? In what
sense does she expose “the truth about us” as Americans (if you agree that she does).
6. Brooks. Does “The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith” present its zoot-suiter primarily as a figure of
sympathy or ridicule? How do the poem’s references to art and artistry shape your response?
7. Ginsberg. What are the essential elements of the new Beat masculinity that Ginsberg presents in Howl?
Do you find any traces of mainstream masculinity in Beat manhood, or do you think it breaks free of
traditional gender roles?
8. Plath. Three of Plath’s most famous poems end with ambiguous ascents: “Ariel,” “Lady Lazarus,” and
“Fever 103.” Choose 2 of them, and determine the degree of power each speaker possesses at the
moment of her “rising.” Does the speaker choose to ascend, or is she compelled by something else? And
where—or toward what—is her ascent aimed?
9. Collins. Topic TBA