English 361
Spring 2017
Syllabus
Instructor: Jonathan Morse, Kuykendall 518 MWF 9:30-10:20 and by appointment. Phone 956-8802,
e-mail [email protected], class web page jonathanmorse.net.
Text: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, fifth edition — the full edition with the maroon cover,
not the shorter edition with the brown cover.
Grades: based at 25% each on two exams, a five-page paper, and a final. I grade on the +/system, with an A worth 4.0 points, an A- 3.7, a B+ 3.3, a B 3.0, etc.
One more assignment, graded pass-fail, will be a sonnet that you’ll write yourself. To pass that
one, all you’ll have to do is rewrite and rewrite and rewrite until the poem rhymes accurately
and scans accurately and makes some sense in prose paraphrase. Keep writing and I’ll keep
reading. Feel free – please! – to come to the office and work with me one on one. I won’t be
grading your sonnet as a work of art; I’ll be grading it as a demonstration of your acquired
technical skill. The traditional pedagogical simile is, “Like learning to tie your shoes.”
Yes, that idea sank in because similes are built into language. And yes, “sank in” and “built in”
are metaphors.*
And yes, Walt Whitman wrote a poem called “Spontaneous Me.” But Spontaneous Me did
rewrite.
More about grades: Class participation will raise your grade in borderline cases. Attendance
and completion of all work are required, and the plagiarism policy is, If you do it even once you
fail the course. For details, read the document “Classroom Policies” on the web page.
Attendance and other administrative matters are covered in the “Classroom Policies”
document. If you have a documentable disability, get in touch as soon as possible with the
Kokua office in QLCSS 013, phone 956-7511 or 956-7512. The counselors there can get you the
help you’re entitled to, whether your disability is long-term (such as a visual handicap) or shortterm (such as an injured writing hand).
But if you wind up having to miss a lot of class, please drop the course.
*
Calendar, corrected March 24
1/9 Introduction
11, 13 The words under the hood 1: denotation and connotation
16 Holiday
18, 20, 23 The words under the hood 2: metaphor and metonymy
25, 27 The sounds of the motor: rhythm and euphony
30, 2/1, 2/3 We connect the computer: meter
2/6, 8 We turn on the radio: rhyme
* 10 Exam 1, about this verse technology
13 Exam discussed. One more tool: the stanza
15, 17 One stanza form: the sonnet
20 Holiday
22, 24, 27, 3/1 We practice writing a sonnet.
* 3/3 Sonnet drafts due and discussed.
6, 8, 10, 13, 15 Sonnets by Spenser, Shakespeare and Keats
*
17 Exam 2, about the sonnet
20-24 Exam discussed. Sonnets and other poems by Wordsworth, the great simplifier of
poetic language. Paper assigned March 24.
27-31 Holiday
4/3-10 (four periods) Great simplifiers 2 and 3: Whitman and Pound
* 12 Paper due and discussed
14 Holiday
17-28 (six periods) Time travel to two long poems: Whitman’s Crossing Brooklyn Ferry and
Milton’s Lycidas.
5/1, 3 Happy endings: the poet who said, “A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of
words” and the poet who said about a poem,
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing
-- William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens.
Final: Friday, May 12, 2:15-4:15