Module Contact: Dr Ross Hair, AMA Copyright of the University of East Anglia Version 2

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1 UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA School of Art, Media and American Studies Main Series UG Examination TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY AMAL5011B Time allowed: TWO hours Answer TWO questions: the question from Section A and ONE question from Section B. Notes are not permitted in this examination. Do not turn over until you are told to do so by the Invigilator. AMAL5011B Module Contact: Dr Ross Hair, AMA Copyright of the University of East Anglia Version 2

2 Page 2 SECTION A 1) Select ONE of the poems provided. Examine the poem in close critical detail, paying particular attention to language, form, and content. You should also discuss how it illustrates the themes and preoccupations of the poet and the light it casts upon wider themes of twentieth-century American poetry. Robert Duncan Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, that is not mine, but is a made place, that is mine, it is so near to the heart, an eternal pasture folded in all thought so that there is a hall therein that is a made place, created by light wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall. Wherefrom fall all architectures I am I say are likenesses of the First Beloved whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady. She it is Queen Under The Hill whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words that is a field folded. It is only a dream of the grass blowing east against the source of the sun in an hour before the sun s going down whose secret we see in a children s game of ring a round of roses told. Often I am permitted to return to a meadow as if it were a given property of the mind that certain bounds hold against chaos, that is a place of first permission, everlasting omen of what is. PLEASE TURN OVER

3 Page 3 H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) Pool Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea-fish. I cover you with my net. What are you - banded one? Lorine Niedecker Black Hawk held: In reason land cannot be sold, only things to be carried away, and I am old. Young Lincoln's general moved, pawpaw in bloom, and to this day, Black Hawk, reason has small room.

4 Page 4 Harryette Mullen from Muse & Drudge Sapphire's lyre styles plucked eyebrows bow lips and legs whose lives are lonely too my last nerve's lucid music sure chewed up the juicy fruit you must don't like my peaches there's some left on the tree you've had my thrills a reefer a tub of gin don't mess with me I'm evil I'm in your sin clipped bird eclipsed moon soon no memory of you no drive or desire survives you flutter invisible still PLEASE TURN OVER

5 Page 5 William Carlos Williams Shoot it Jimmy! Our orchestra is the cat's nuts Banjo jazz with a nickelplated amplifier to soothe the savage beast Get the rhythm That sheet stuff 's a lot a cheese. Man gimme the key and lemme loose I make 'em crazy with my harmonies Shoot it Jimmy Nobody Nobody else but me They can't copy it -

6 Page 6 Ronald Johnson BEAM 18 (from ARK) PLEASE TURN OVER

7 Page 7 Frank O Hara Why I Am Not A Painter I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not. Well, for instance, Mike Goldberg is starting a painting. I drop in. "Sit down and have a drink" he says. I drink; we drink. I look up. "You have SARDINES in it." "Yes, it needed something there." "Oh." I go and the days go by and I drop in again. The painting is going on, and I go, and the days go by. I drop in. The painting is finished. "Where's SARDINES?" All that's left is just letters, "It was too much," Mike says. But me? One day I am thinking of a color: orange. I write a line about orange. Pretty soon it is a whole page of words, not lines. Then another page. There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. Days go by. It is even in prose, I am a real poet. My poem is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

8 Page 8 Lew Welch Springtime in the Rockies, Lichen All these years I overlooked them in the racket of the rest, this symbiotic splash of plant and fungus feeding on rock, on sun, a little moisture, air tiny acid-factories dissolving salt from living rocks and eating them. Here they are, blooming! Trail rock, talus and scree, all dusted with it: rust, ivory, brilliant yellow-green, and cliffs like murals! Huge panels streaked and patched, quietly with shooting-stars and lupine at the base. Closer, with the glass, a city of cups! Clumps of mushrooms and where do the plants begin? Why are they doing this? In this big sky and all around me peaks & the melting glaciers, why am I made to kneel and peer at Tiny? These are the stamps of the final envelope. How can the poisons reach them? In such thin air, how can they care for the loss of a million breaths? What, possibly, could make their ground more bare? Let it all die. The hushed globe will wait and wait for what is now so small and slow to open it again. As now, indeed, it opens it again, this scentless velvet, crumbler-of-the-rocks, this Lichen! PLEASE TURN OVER

9 Page 9 SECTION B You may refer to poems included in Section A in your answer but not the one that you wrote your previous answer on. 2) I don t know how the old time poets did it the poetic vein was the soft spoken, hushed, sweet-worded kind of thing, almost artificial, but maybe in their own time it was earthy enough for poetry now I find when one hasn t been writing for a while, you start off in something like that soft vein, but as soon as you get used to writing again, you pick up everything for poetry, get into everyday speech etc. (Lorine Niedecker). In what ways and for what reasons have any TWO poets studied on the module used the vernacular in their poetry? 3) Charles Olson famously proposed of getting rid of the lyrical interference of the individual as ego, of the subject and his soul. Discussing the work of TWO poets studied on the module, discuss the ways in which twentieth-century American poetry has reassessed the lyric voice and/or subjectivity and why. 4) Is it reasonable or accurate to suggest that Frank O Hara s poetry is more accessible than Ezra Pound s? Please explain your answer with specific reference to both poets and their work. 5) What was new about the New American Poetry? 6) What does Robert Duncan mean when he writes: Responsibility is to keep / the ability to respond? END OF PAPER

Section I. Quotations

Section I. Quotations Hour 8: The Thing Explainer! Those of you who are fans of xkcd s Randall Munroe may be aware of his book Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, in which he describes a variety of things using