Fall, 2000	David Young
Creative Writing 110	Rice 30, (440) 775-8576
T,Th, 11:00-12:15	Office hours: M, 11:00-12:15
King 106	WF, 3:30-4:30 & by appt
	E-mail: David.Young@oberlin.edu

TECHNIQUE AND FORM IN POETRY

Text: The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, plus various handouts.

A few words about the rationale and organization of this course:

• Form and technique are as important to the poetry of the 20^th and 21^st centuries as they ever were, but the tools for describing, identifying and practicing them are less well-known and therefore less readily available.
• Poetry appears in every language and in every culture, always as a heightened form of speech that reflects practices of magic and ritual. In its use of language it is dancing rather than walking. However quiet and/or conversational, it is still chanting or singing, rather than simply talking.
• What modern and contemporary poets do to heighten the poem's voice so that it "sings" and to manage the poem's movement so that it "dances," however subtly, is crucial information for anyone who aspires to write poetry in the present day, as well as for anyone who would read it intelligently.
• The quite various things that poets do are in great part based on their considered response to what has been done in the past. As in all the arts, what's new comes out of a conversation with what's old, a conversation that is sometimes friendly, sometimes an argument.
• This course explores some twentieth-century poetic techniques as they have developed out of a dialogue with tradition: modifying it, dismissing it, re-encountering it. The course is based neither on a preference for traditional forms, nor on a dislike of them, but simply on the insight that one needs to know tradition, both distant and recent, in order to know what one's relation to it is going to be. Let's say you dislike seeing rhyme and meter used in the present day (though you may make an exception for hip-hop!), or at least as a choice for your own writing; your next question must be about alternative possibilities. Since meter and rhyme were ways that poems once acquired shape and a certain sense of inevitability, took on effective movement and memorable pattern (danced and sang), what are your new ways going to be? Will they be modifications of the past or will they be totally different (and is there any such thing as totally, given the amount of experimentation this century has seen?)?
• You can' know the answer to such questions if you don't a) know the past, and b) know what other modern and contemporary poets have done about their relation to it. This course, in other words, is about making informed choices. It looks at adaptations of traditional forms and it also takes note of poetry's appropriations of forms from the other arts, like the musical suite and the painting, its uses of ritual, and its complex relation to culture and nature, past and present. We can't go deeply into these matters, given our time-frame, but we can acquaint ourselves with a lot of different possibilities, so as to know when and how we might wish to go further with them at a later date. It's by actually trying things that we get a feel for their usefulness and adaptability; if you write a bad sonnet, say, you still know more about the sonnet form than you would if you had never tried one. And your second sonnet, if you persist, is likely to have some merit, as you get more comfortable with the form and its possibilities. The assignments that feel especially interesting to you as a writer are the ones you'll want to return to eventually, for further practice.
• The class meets twice a week; Tuesday meetings will normally deal with fine points stemming from the reading assignments (we'll read a lot of modern poetry, and some of it is rather difficult and/or based on an aesthetic you may be unfamiliar with), including a chance to go beyond issues of form and into questions of content, rhetorical strategy, voice, etc. Thursdays will examine and discuss selected student exercises, then move to the initial presentation of the upcoming exercise.
• The assignments are aimed at helping you master the techniques under study by trying them yourself. They come in a logical sequence and they need to reflect wide and careful reading among 20^th-century poets writing in English. I'll be asking you to read a lot of modern poems and to read as writers do, looking for alignments that open avenues for your own composition and inspiration. Your exercises will be read by me as you hand them in and again at the semester's end, when you submit a portfolio of your semester's efforts. I will make very brief comments on your manuscripts and will keep a running record of approximate grades which won't be given back to you unless you ask to see it; I'd encourage not to worry very much about grades. If your work comes in on time regularly and is conscientious about the assignment (e.g. a considered example rather than something slapped out ten minutes before class), you'll do well in the course, a B+ or above. People who get B's and below are people who have trouble with deadlines and/or who treat assignments casually.
• What we won't be able to do, obviously, given the size of the class, is workshop (discuss and critique) your efforts in the way that occurs in smaller writing classes. That's the ideal form, probably, for progressing as a writer in a structured learning environment, though not everyone thrives in such circumstances (can you imagine, say, Rimbaud in a workshop?) In the absence of workshop size and interaction, I would encourage you to form small groups that can serve as informal, student-run workshops, in which you discuss both the reading assignments and each others' efforts. I will visit at least one meeting of any regular workshop that is thus formed, to give you ideas about how best to use your time and energy, and to participate in your workshopping.
• Even if you don't form a group, feel free to show your work to your friends and get their reactions. If and when I select your work for class discussion, you'll get a taste of what it is like to have a poem workshopped; that experience, given the size of our class, is likely to be both exhilarating and a little bit intimidating.
• What is the course's structure and progress? We're going to start with the obvious but often overlooked fact, that poetry is defined in great part by the units it imposes upon the medium of language. Except in the case of the prose poem (which we'll examine briefly late in the semester), this means, first and foremost, the line. "Verse" means "turn": the poem walks or dances a certain distance, then turns and repeats or varies the movement. Lines bring both aural and visual regularity to the poem and they afford control of movement for the poet in his/her absence (you are not physically present, but you've left a "score" on the page that helps a reader hear how the poem moves). So we'll begin with the poetic line, and its many options, before moving on to the next basic unit, the stanza. We'll try a number of different stanza forms, in increasing length and difficulty. After that we'll have some time to explore more complicated poetic structures, and to look briefly at modern hybridizing of forms from other areas of experience and the visual/aural experimentation that has characterized some twentieth-century poetry.
• With your reading assignments, which I have selected carefully, in part for their general interest and their reflection of 20^th century poetry, I strongly recommend that you follow these practices:

1. Read every poem at least three times, once for pleasure, once more for sense, then for the techniques that have brought it forward for our study.

    

2. Read each poem out loud at least once. Read your own efforts out loud as well. Listening to a poem will introduce you to its strengths (in the case of the assigned readings) and its weaknesses (in the case of your exercises).

________________

Unit One: The Line, used with a regular beat (metric or accentual)

Tues. Sept. 5: Introduction to the course and first assignment.

Readings for this week: 1.The handout, which summarizes issues of meter and accent and includes examples of blank verse.

2. Metered poems (what Hollander calls accentual-syllabic): Frost, 249-50 ("Birches") and 267-68 ("Directive"); Edward Thomas, 276 ("October") -- these are your blank-verse examples, along with the Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Milton on the handout sheet.

A few examples where rhyme and meter interact: Auden, 739-40 ("Lullaby") --note trochaics; Roethke, 778-9; ("My Papa's Waltz"); Larkin, 1069 ("This Be the Verse").

3. Accentual (stress count only) poems: Yeats, 153-4 ("The Fisherman"); Hopkins, 106 ("Inversnaid"); Auden, 738-9 ("As I Walked Out One Evening");; Bishop, 820-1 ("The Fish"); Wilbur, 1036-7 ("Love Calls Us to the Things of This World").

Basically, when the metrical pattern seems too irregular to be consistent, it's probably the case that the poet is only counting "beats," which means the number and placement of unstressed syllables is not systematic and therefore not crucial.

Assignment: At least five lines in a meter of your choice, and five lines in an accentual pattern of your choice (three, four, or five-stress line). Avoid rhyme in this assignment, please. In the first example, you want to be consistent (though not boring) in your use of, say, iambic pentameter (or whatever other meter you select). In the second, try to get away from that kind of regularity by only being regular in your number of stresses, or "beats." Your metered example should probably be blank verse, i.e. unrhymed iambic pentameter. Your accentual pattern should probably be a three-beat line.

Due Tuesday, Sept.12

Thurs. Sept. 7: We'll look at examples of metered and accentual poems so your can get some practice in "training your ear."

________________________

Tues. Sept. 12: Discussion of metered and accentual poems in the assigned reading. First assignment due. Second assignment introduced:

One B. The 'irregular' line, plus syllabics

Readings: Syllabics: Moore, 456 ("The Fish"); Auden, 753-5 ("A Lullaby"); Justice, 1152 ("The Tourist from Syracuse"); handout: Hall ("Apples," "The Long River"), Plath ("Mushrooms"). Most readers will be unaware of the regularity that governs these poems; what advantage do the poets get out of using an undetected system?

The 'Irregular' Line: Whitman, 43-4 ("To a Locomotive in Winter"); Stein, 238 ("Susie Asado"); Williams, 318 ("Spring and All"); Lawrence, 366 ("Humming-Bird"); L. Hughes, 648-9 ("Brass Spittoons"); Roethke, 783 ("Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, Frau Schwartze"); Levertov, 1111-12 ("Pleasures"); Ginsberg, 1215-6 ("A Supermarket in California"); O'Hara, 1233 ("The Day Lady Died"). Ask yourself in each case what techniques the poet has used, in the absence of regularity or systematic movement, to make the language feel like the language of poetry rather than that of prose.

Assignment: A poem in syllabics or in 'irregular' lines, 5-15 lines. Due 9/19.

Thurs. Sept. 14: Student line exercises examined and discussed.

____________________

Tues. Sept. 19: Discussion of readings in syllabic and 'irregular' lineation. Second assignment due. Third assignment, the couplet, introduced:

Unit Two: The Stanza as a unit of organization. The couplet

Readings: Rhymed couplet stanzas: Sitwell, 450 ("Aubade"); Lowell, 962-3

("After the Surprising Conversions"); Gunn, 1340 ("Moly"); Muldoon, 1679 ("Making the Move").

Off-rhymed couplets: H.D., 415-22 (from "Tribute to the Angels": irregular off-rhyming); cummings, 560 ("maggie and milly and molly and may"); Muldoon, 1681-2 ("Meeting the British").

Unrhymed couplets: Thomas, 277 ("The Green Roads" -- note the system of repetition here); Stevens, 303 ("Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination"); Williams, 321 ("Flowers by the Sea"); Ammons, 1172 ("Small Song"); T. Hughes, 1395-6 ("The Horses"); Strand, 1438 ("The Marriage"); Atwood, 1546 ("They Eat Out"); Pinsky, 1564

("The Questions"); Raine, 1618 ("A Martian Sends a Postcard Home").

Try to figure out how the two-line stanza functions to govern attention and produce meaning in all examples, rhymed or otherwise.

Assignment: A poem in couplets, rhymed, off-rhymed, or unrhymed. Due 9/26

Thurs. Sept. 21: Selected student examples discussed.

___________________________

Tues. Sept. 26: Discussion of couplet readings. Third Assignment Due.

Introduction of fourth assignment:

Two B: Three Line Stanzas, or Triplets

Readings: Rhymed triplet stanzas:Hardy, 81 ("In the Moonlight"); Hopkins, 91 ("Winter with the Gulf Stream"); Frost, 258 ("Acquainted with the Night"); Ewart, 938-9 ("Robert Graves"); Davie, 1054-55 ("Barnsley and District"); Walcott, 1368-9 ("Codicil"); Stallworthy, 1460 ("Mother Tongue"); Schnackenberg, 1716-18 ("Supernatural Love").

Off-rhymed triplets: Heaney, 1530-31 (Section 12 from Station Island); Tate, 1610 ("Intimidations of an Autobiography").

Unrhymed triplets: Kipling, 199 ("The Runes on Weland's Sword"); Stevens, 293-4, 295 ("A Postcard from the Volcano" and "A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts"); Rukeyser, 882 ("Seventh Avenue"); Simpson, 1101 ("After Midnight"); Hughes, 1398 ("Thistles"); Plath, 1423 ("Ariel"); Strand, 1437 ("Eating Poetry"); Tate, 1608-9 ("The Lost Pilot"); Dove, 1693-4 ("The House Slave").

Assignment: A poem in triplets, rhymed, off-rhymed or unrhymed. Due 10/3

Thurs. Sept. 28: Selected student couplet exercises.

_____________________

Tues. Oct. 3: Discussion of triplet readings. Fourth Assignment Due.

Introduction of fifth assignment:

Two C: Four Line Stanzas, or Quatrains

Readings: Rhymed quatrains: Hardy, 69, 77 ("Neutral Tones" and "Channel Firing"); Housman, 124 ("Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now"); Yeats, 141 ("When You Are Old"); Robinson, 215 ("Miniver Cheevy"); Frost, 255 ("Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"); Lawrence, 358 ("Piano"); Eliot, 486 ("Sweeney Among the Nightingales"); Bogan, 595-6 ("Women"); Randall, 890 ("Vacant Lot"); Simpson, 1100-01 ("My Father in the Night Commanding No").

Off-rhymed quatrains: Smith, 654 ("Not Waving But Drowning"); Stafford, 893 ("Traveling Through the Dark"); Clampitt, 1029-30 ("A Cure at Porlock"); Larkin, 1060-61 ("Toads"), 1066-7 ("High Windows"; T. Hughes, 1396-7 ("The Thought-Fox").

Unrhymed quatrains: Stevens, 302 ("The Plain Sense of Things"); H.D., 411 ("Sea Rose"); Stafford, 893-4 ("At the Bomb Testing Site"); Strand, 1440 ("My Life"); Heaney, 1518-20 ("Bogland," "Limbo," "Sunlight").

Assignment: A poem in quatrains, rhymed, off-rhymed, or unrhymed Due 10/10 .

Thurs. Oct. 5: Selected student triplet exercises.

_______________

Tues. Oct. 10: Discussion of quatrain readings. Fifth Assignment Due.

Introduction of sixth assignment:

Two D: Longer Stanzas (5, 6, 8 lines, etc.)

Readings: Five-line stanzas: Jarrell, 902 ("Eighth Air Force"); Bly, 1238 ("The Great Society"); Plath, 1424-5 ("Daddy").

Six-line stanzas: Carroll, 61-4 ("The Walrus and the Carpenter"); Yeats, 153 ("The Wild Swans at Coole"); Jarrell, 906-8 ("Next Day"); Berryman, 913-916 (Six examples from The Dream Songs);Thomas, 924-5 ("A Refusal to Mourn the Death,by Fire, of a Child in London"); Wilbur,1035 ("Ceremony"); Lowell, 964-66 ("Skunk Hour").

(Nothing against seven-line stanzas; I'm just trying to keep the reading assignment from getting out of hand)

Eight-line stanzas (ottava rima): Yeats, 161-2 ("Sailing to Byzantium"; 167-69 ("Among School Children"); Auden, 747-8 ("Mundus et Infans").

Nine-line stanzas: Thomas, 925-6 ("Fern Hill").

Assignment: A poem, rhymed, off-rhymed, or unrhymed, in at least three regular stanzas of 5, 6, 8, or 9 lines. Due 10/24.

Thurs. Oct. 12: Selected student quatrain exercises

____________________

F A L L B R E A K

___________________

Tues. Oct. 24: Discussion of longer stanza readings. Sixth assignment due.

Introduction of seventh assignment:

Unit Five: The Sonnet, past and present

Readings. Traditional sonnets: Hopkins, 101 ("God's Grandeur" and "Spring"); Yeats. 160-61 ("Leda and the Swan"); Robinson, 213 ("Supremacy"); Frost, 249 ("The Oven Bird"), 250 ("Putting the Seed"); E. Thomas, 278 ("February Afternoon"); Jeffers, 434 ("Love the Wild Swan"); Ransom, 474 ("Piazzo Piece"); McKay, 518-19 ("America," "The Harlem Dancer," "The White City"); Millay, 526 ("Love is Not All" and "Hearing Your Words"); MacLeish, 529-30 ("The End of the World"); cummings, 555 ("little joe gould has lost his teeth"); Kavanagh, 677-78 ("Iniskeen Road"); Auden, 737-8 ("Who's Who"), 741-2; Berryman, 916 ("Sonnet 25"); Heaney, 1517 ("Requiem for the Croppies"); Hacker, 1574-5 ("Runaways Cafe II," "Mythology," "From Coda").

Assignment: A sonnet in traditional form. Due 10/31

Thurs. Oct 26: Selected student exercises.

________________________________

Tues. Oct.31: Discussion of traditional sonnets. Seventh assignment due.

Introduction of eighth assignment:

Five B: The Sonnet transformed

Reading. Exploring the limits of the rhymed sonnet: Hopkins, 102 ("The Windhover"), 102 ("Pied Beauty" -- what Hopkins called "a curtal sonnet"), 105 ("Felix Randal"); Jeffers, 436 ("The Eye"); cummings, 551 ("the Cambridge ladies"); Toomer, 564 ("November Cotton Flower"); Auden, 741 ("From Sonnets from China"); Thomas, 921 ("When All My Five and Country Senses See"); Larkin, 1058 ("So Through That Unripe Day"); Dugan, 1093 ("On Trees"); Hacker, 1573 ("13").

Unrhymed sonnets: Lowell, 969-971 ( especially "T.S. Eliot" and "After the Convention"); Rich, 1329-30 ("From Twenty-One Love Poems"); Tranter, 1589-90 ("From Crying in Early Infancy").

Assignment: A sonnet in off-rhyme, unrhymed, or some other variation of the traditional form. Due Nov. 7.

Thurs. Nov. 2: Selected exercises.

_____________

Tues. Nov. 7: Discussion of experimental sonnets. Eighth assignment due.

Introduction of ninth assignment:

Unit Six: Villanelle, Sestina, Canzone, Rondeau

Reading: Villanelles: Empson, 729, 731-2; Auden, 748-9; Roethke, 782; Bishop, 829; Thomas, 926-7; Hugo, 1125; Justice, 1154.

Sestinas: Hecht, 1075-6, and handout, with Auden, Bishop, Ashbery.

Canzone: Hacker, 1572-3. .

Rondeau: Hacker, 1572.

Thurs. Nov. 9: Selected exercises.

______________

Tues. Nov. 14: Discussion of readings from previous week. Ninth assignment due.

Introduction of tenth assignment:

Unit Seven: Forms Borrowed, Hybridized, Appropriated

Reading: The theme and variations: Yeats, 175-8 ("Vacillation"); Stevens, 287-8 ("Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"); H.D. 415-22 (we looked at this for couplets; now look at it for t & v); Roethke, 784-7 ("The Far Field"); Levertov, 1113-15 ("Matins"); Kinnell, 1250-52 ("Flower-Herding on Mount Monadnock"); Snyder, 1388-9 ("Four Poems for Robin").

Poems off of other art:

Ekphrastic (based on paintings, etc.) poems: Yeats, 180-81 ("Lapis Lazuli"); De La Mare, 236 ("A Portrait"); Stevens, 295 ("Study of Two Pears"); Williams, 323 ("The Dance"), 349 ("From Pictures from Bruegel"); Auden, 740-41 ("Musee des Beaux Arts"); Ashbery, 1264-5 ("Forties Flick").

Poems inspired by music and musical form: Owen, 540-1 ("Anthem for Doomed Youth"); Hughes, 647-8 ("The Weary Blues"); Auden, 735 ("From Five Songs"), 738-9 ("As I Walked Out One Evening"); Rukeyser, 884-5 ("Ballad of Orange and Grape"); Randall, 886-7 ("Ballad of Birmingham").

Poems off of other poems: Carroll, 64-5 ("The White Knight's Song"); Stevens, 298 ("Of Modern Poetry"); Moore, 457 ("Poetry"); Koch, 1130 ("Mending Sump"), 1132 ("Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"); Ashbery, 1269-70 ("Paradoxes and Oxymorons"); Strand, 1437-8 ("Eating Poetry"); Tate, 1612 ("Poem to Some of My Recent Poems").

Assignment: A poem whose subject and/or structure is inspired by another artwork. Due. 11/21

Thurs. Nov. 16: Selected exercises. .

__________________

Tues. Nov. 21: Discussion of readings. Tenth assignment due. Introduction of eleventh assignment.

Unit Eight: Experimental Traditions: Emphasizing the visual: "theater of the page."

Reading: Williams, 318-19 ("The Red Wheelbarrow"); 320-21 ("This Is Just to Say"); Moore, 459-61 "The Steeple-Jack"); cummings, 554-5 ("space being Curved"); Olson, 809-14 ("From The Maximus Poems"); Ferlinghetti, 1006-08 ("Sometime During Eternity"). Handout of concrete poetry.

Assignment: A poem with a strong visual component. Due. Nov. 28

No class Thursday --Thanksgiving Break

___________________

Tues. Nov. 28: Discussion of readings. Eleventh assignment due.

Introduction of twelfth assignment:

Eight B: Exploiting the musical potential of language.

Reading: Dickinson, 48-9 ("A Bird came down the Walk") Hopkins, 106-7 ("No Worst, There Is None"); Yeats, 183-4 ("News for the Delphic Oracle"); Stein, 238-41 ("A Valentine for Sherwood Anderson"); Stevens, 289-90 ("Bantams in Pine Woods"); Pound, 405-09 (Canto 81); Eliot, 482-5 ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"); Bunting, 637-40 ("From Briggflats"); Roethke, 778("Cuttings" and "Cuttings Later"); Lowell, 958-61 ("The Quaker Graveyard at Nantucket"); Thomas, 922-4 ("Poem in October"); Plath, 1427 ("Blackberrying"); Heaney, 1516-17 ("Death of a Naturalist").

Assignment: Some musical experimentation of your own. Due Dec. 5

Thurs. Nov. 30: Selected student exercises.

_________________

Tues. Dec. 5: Discussion of readings. Twelfth assignment due.

Introduction of thirteenth assignment.

Unit Nine: Cultural Borrowings and Prose Poems

Reading: Pound, 379 ("The Return"). Handout with haiku, ghazals, prose poems.

Assignment: A prose poem, or a ghazal, or several haiku. Due 12/12

Thurs. Dec. 7: Selected student exercises

_____________

Tues. Dec. 12. Discussion of readings. Thirteenth assignment due.

Thurs. Dec. 14: Selected student examples. Last class. Course evaluation, final thoughts, etc.

____________

PORTFOLIOS OF YOUR SEMESTER'S WORK ARE DUE BY NOON, DECEMBER 18, RICE 30

They should include the following: 1. A brief self-evaluation. 2. All the assignments you turned in, i.e. the copies with my comments. 3.(entirely optional) Any revisions you have made and any poems written during the semester that I haven' t seen and that you'd like to show me.

I will read each portfolio and write some general comments on your semester's performance and on individual poems. Portfolios can be picked up outside my office during or after Winter Term, or you can arrange to have yours mailed to you by including a stamped, self-addressed envelope when you turn your portfolio in.