Spring 2000
English 415
Rice 30 T,Th, 3-4:15 Office hours: M, 11-12:15
E-mail:
David.Young@oberlin.edu
x8576
King 325
& WF, 3:30-4:30
Texts:
This course will give us a chance to look closely at ten contemporary poets. Two are deceased, the other eight are still practicing. We'll also meet and talk with a poet/critic, Lee Upton, and we'll experiment with various forms of response to the poetry we're reading, including poems of our own and reviews for journals. In the tradition of seminars, the class will be largely in the hands of the students, with two-person teams responsible for preparing the assignment and conducting the discussion for eight of our ten poets. Your final grade will be based 33% on your team's success during the week you're in charge of the class, and 66% on your participation, by means of writing and discussion, in the other weeks of the course.
The course falls into two parts. In the first part we will look at five poets in light of the approach taken by Lee Upton in her book, The Muse of Abandonment. Ms. Upton, herself a poet, will be visiting and talking to the class in the fifth week of the semester. We'll be particularly interested in how she sees the relation between her own poetry and her reading and writing about her contemporaries. In the first module we'll read four of the five poets her book treats, making a substitution for the fifth (Elizabeth Bishop in place of Louise Glück). In the second module we'll read five poets who don't fit her paradigm, asking why and in what ways they differ. The result should not only give us a good look at the current scene in American poetry, but help us formulate and answer questions about the relation between poetry and values, between urgent spiritual questions and the answers, or lack of them, that poets are currently formulating. There is no agenda here about a "right way" to be a poet in our time, just an interest in the variety of ways that poets practice their art.
In the first week we'll form our teams so that they can set to work. I'll be the first "team," presenting Elizabeth Bishop, and I'll do it again at the end, presenting Pattiann Rogers while the rest of you are finishing up.
Since we meet twice a week, we have some opportunity to "workshop" your creative responses to the reading. I want everyone to try writing a response poem to each poet, and while I won't require that you bring these to workshop sessions to share with other members of the seminar, I will strongly encourage that. How much workshop time we give to class writing will depend partly on how far we've gotten with discussing the reading (that has first priority, always) and how much you produce and wish to share. Response poems are not necessarily imitations of the author we're reading. They may look and feel quite different. The important thing is that they were formulated while you were studying and reacting to the poet in question; our discussions can take it from there.
Here, then, is our order of study, week by week.
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Week One (Feb. 8 & 10) |
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Week Two (Feb. 15 & 17) David Young
presiding |
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Week Three (Feb. 22 & 24) Team One
presiding |
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Week Four (Feb. 29 & March 2) Team Two
presiding |
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Week Five (March 7 & 9) Nobody presiding |
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Week Six (March 14 & 16) Team Three
presiding |
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Week Seven (March 21 & 23) Team Four
presiding |
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Week Eight (April 4 & 6) Team Five
presiding |
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Week Nine (April 11 & 13) Team Six presiding |
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Week Ten (April 18 & 20) Team Seven presiding |
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Week Eleven (April 25 & 27) Team Eight
presiding |
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Week Twelve (May 2 & 4) David Young presiding |
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Week Thirteen (May 9 & 11) David Young
presiding |
Contents of Portfolios: Ten revised response poems and twenty-five pages of prose on the material studied. Of this twenty-five, ten to fifteen can be devoted to the poet you presented, with the rest devoted to other poets we studied. Formats can vary; we'll discuss this. Portfolios are due May 16, by 4:30.