English 88.301, Spring 2004, T/R 10:30-12, Bennett Hall 227                                         Bob Perelman

perelman@dept.english.upenn.edu                            BH 309, 8987055, Office Hrs: T 1-4, and by appt

website: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~perelman/classes/english/088                                                   

                                                                                                                                                           

                English 88: 20th-Century American Poetry

This will be a survey of American poetry in the 20th-Century concentrating on a number of representative poets and reading their work in relation both to literary and cultural history. We will begin with Whitman, Dickinson, Dunbar to establish some contexts that 20th-century poets inherited, accepting or rebelling against them. We will read a wide range of modernists, first-wave (Williams, Stein, H. D., Moore, Pound, Eliot, Toomer, Frost, McKay) and second-wave (Crane, Rukeyser, Hughes, Reznikoff, Zukofsky). We will then follow some of the poetic strands based for the most part on modernist experiment.

 

Books:

The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vol 1 & 2, Jahan Ramazani,   Richard Ellmann, and Robert O=Clair, editors.

Available at the Penn Book Center (130 S. 34th St.)

 

Requirements: Participation in class discussion; 6 short papers; a poetry journal. Absences and late papers will affect your grade.

 

Schedule of Readings (subject to modification):

note: Emily Dickinson (30) means, ARead all the poems and the headnote in the Dickinson        section beginning on page 30.@ Page numbers in Vol 2 will be indicated by N2.

Other readings can be found at the class website.

 

INTRODUCTION. MODERN TIMES & MODERNISM

Jan 13:

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, AThe Song of the Motorman@

William Carlos Williams, poem #11 from Spring and All

Robert Creeley, AI know a man@

 

PRECURSORS

Emily Dickinson & Co.

Jan 15:

Emily Dickinson (30)

Susan Howe (688, N2) and  AThese Flames and Generosities of the Heart: The Illogic of Sumptuary Values@

Rae Armantrout, AOverlooked: Dickinson=s Poem #1712@

 

 

 

Jan 20:

Lorine Niedecker (716)

Susan Howe, in N2 (688)

Rae Armantrout, poems

 

Paul Laurence Dunbar & Co.

Jan 22:                                                Paper #1 due in class

Paul Laurence Dunbar, AAn Ante-Bellum Sermon,@ AOde to Ethiopa,@ ASong,@ AThe Corn-Stalk Fiddle,@ AThe Deserted Plantation,@ AWe Wear the Mask.@

ADunbar, Introduction,@ Joanne M. Braxton

Claude McKay (498)

Jean Toomer (556)

Countee Cullen (726)

 

Jan 27:

Langston Hughes (684) and AThe Negro artist and the Racial Mountain@ (964)

Sterling Brown (669)

 

Walt Whitman & Co.

Jan 29:

Walt Whitman (1) and excerpt from APreface to Leaves of Grass@(865)

Randall Jarrell, ASome Lines from Whitman@

 

Feb 3:

Edgar Lee Masters (157)

Ezra Pound, AA Pact@ (350)

William Carlos Williams, ATo Elsie@ (293)

Hart Crane, The Bridge (613)

 

FIRST-WAVE MODERNISM

Imagism

Feb 5:                                                  Paper #2 due in class

Ezra Pound (345) and AA Retrospect@ & AHow to Read@ (929)

 

Feb 10:

H. D. (393)

 

>Classic= >European= Modernism

Feb 12:

T. S. Eliot (460) and ATradition and the Individual Talent,@ AHamlet,@ AThe Metaphysical Poets@ (941)

 

Feb 17:

Eliot continued

American, Anti-Eliotic Modernism

Feb 19:

William Carlos Williams (283) and APrologue to Kora in Hell@ (954)

 

Feb 24:

Williams continued

 

Feminist Modernism

Feb 26:

Mina Loy (268) and AFeminist Manifesto@ (921)

 

Verbal Modernism

Mar 2:

Gertrude Stein (176) and ATransatlantic Interview@ (986)

 

Mar 4:                                                 Paper #3 due in class

Stein continued

 

Spring Break

 

Mar 16:

Marianne Moore (430) and AHumility, Concentration, Gusto@(994)

 

Mar 18:

Wallace Stevens (235)

 

[out of sequence:]

Mar 22: Lyn Hejinian reads at the Kelly Writers House, 6:30.

Mar 23: Lyn Hejinian (788, N2)

 

Ordinary Speech

Mar 25:                                               Paper #4 due in class

Robert Frost (201)

Charles Reznikoff (537)

 

LATE MODERNISM/AFTER MODERNISM/POSTMODERNISM

 

Projective Verse vs Academic Verse

Mar 30:

Charles Olson (1, N2) and AProjective Verse@ (1053, N2)

Robert Creeley (325, N2)

Richard Wilbur (196, N2)

Randall Jarrell (85, N2)

 

Activism

Apr 1:

Muriel Rukeyser (75, N2)

Adrienne Rich (456, N2) and AWhen We Dead Awaken@ (1086, N2)

Elizabeth Bishop (15, N2)

 

The New York School

Apr 6:

Frank O=Hara (361, N2) and APersonism@ (1072, N2)

 

Apr 8:                                                  Paper #5 due in class

John Ashbery (384, N2)

 

The Beats & Confessional Verse

Apr 13:

Allen Ginsberg (334, N2)

Robert Lowell (119, N2)

Sylvia Plath (593, N2)

 

Nation Language

Apr 15:

Gwendolen Brooks (140, N2)

Amiri Baraka (632, N2) and AThe Myth of Negro Literature@ (1077, N2)

John Berryman (92, N2)

Kamau Brathwaite (542, N2)

 

Language Writing

Apr 20:

Charles Bernstein (909, N2) and ASemblance@ (1111, N2)

Ron Silliman, poems

 

Apr 22:                                                Paper #6 due in class

Wrap-up