English 56: Poets Nature Poetry - Lyric & Narrative Professor Andrew Warren TF: Josephine Reece T/Th 10-1130 Barker Center 018; jreece@g.harvard.edu Th small discussions times to be arranged after shopping week (*see below) Office Hours: T 2-4 (or by appointment); 151 Barker Center warren@fas.harvard.edu {from Bingyi, Apocalypse 2011-15 landscapes depicting the devastation of the 2008 Sichuan earthquakes and floods} This course is a general introduction to reading, discussing and writing about poetry. Our theme this year will be Nature Poetry that is, poems written about natural environments and humans precarious place within them. We begin with Milton's epic, Paradise Lost, and then turn to eighteenth-century satires by Pope & Swift, and work by the Romantics Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Barbauld, Keats, Shelley, Clare & Charlotte Smith. Other writers will include: Americans like Dickinson & Whitman; Modernists such as Eliot & Stevens; post-war poets including Bishop, Ammons & Walcott; as well as several contemporary poets such as Rae Armantrout & Monica Youn. Each week students will attend one standard 1.5-hour class (half-lecture, halfdiscussion) as well as a five-person, hour-long close-reading session led by me.* Bi-weekly writing & discussion sessions will also be scheduled with the TF. By the end of the course you will be able to pick up any poem and think, talk and write cogently and creatively about it. *{we will meet for the first class, Th 8/31; after that we ll sign up to meet in small groups} {William Blake s illustration of Milton s Paradise Lost; Wordsworth & Coleridge s 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads; a page from Emily Dickinson s herbarium; and covers of A.R. Ammons Garbage (1993), Monica Youn s Blackacre (2016), & Rae Armantrout s Entanglements (2017)}
Textbooks can be purchased new or used at the Harvard Coop. The following are required texts: Milton, Paradise Lost, 3 rd revised ed, Gordon Teskey (WW Norton) Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume D: The Romantic Era - 9 th Ed o (Paradise Lost and the Norton Anthology are bundled at the Coop) Monica Youn, Blackacre (Graywolf, 2016) Derek Walcott, The Bounty (FSG, 1998) A.R. Ammons, Garbage (Norton, 1993) Rae Armantrout, Entanglements (Wesleyan, 2017) And these are recommended: James Longenbach, The Art of the Poetic Line - 978-1555974886 Joanna Klink, Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (Penguin, 2015) TUESDAYS I will frame the poems for that day before moving into close readings of them; read each poem a couple times before class THURSDAYS will be small-group discussions read each poem more than a couple times before each discussion Schedule: (subject, of course, to change); readings are to be completed by the dates listed below. Week 0: Th, 8/31 Introducing Lyric & Narrative: samples from Marvell ( The Garden ), Wordsworth ( The Boy of Winander ), Clare (The Fallen Elm ), Dickinson, Ammons and Armantrout Part I. Ode & Elegy (first take) Week 1: T, 9/5: Keats: Sleep and Poetry (1817), Ode to Psyche, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy, To Autumn, Bright Star, La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) Th, 9/7: Small-Group Lyric Meeting w/me Shelley, Mont Blanc (1817) & Stevens, The Idea of Order at Key West (1936) Week 2: Monday: Meeting w/tf to discuss marked-up ode passage T, 9/12 Milton: Ode on the Morning of Christ s Nativity (1629, 45); Paradise Lost (1667), Books I-III Th, 9/14: Lycidas (1637), Paradise Lost, Book IV FIRST EXPLICATION OF AN ODE due Friday, 5pm Part II. Epic Week 3: T, 9/19 Paradise Lost: Books V-VIII memorize a couple lines & listen to one book Th, 9/21 Paradise Lost, Book IX Contemporary Interlude I Monday, September 25, 5pm Monica Youn & Joanna Klink Stratis Haviaras Reading - Thompson Room [Read Youn s Blackacre (2016) and selections from Klink s Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (2015)] [[Attendance Required]] Week 4: T, 9/26 Paradise Lost: Books X, XI (ll. 1-428), XII (ll. 270-649); Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712); Swift, Description of a City Shower (1710), The Lady s Dressing Room (1732) Th, 9/28 Pope, The Dunciad ending (1743); Monica Youn, Blackacre (2016); Klink, Excerpts from a Secret Prophecy (2015) Friday: Meeting w/tf to discuss two-page draft of Midterm Paper
Part IV. Lyrical Ballads Week 5: T, 10/3 Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads, 272-309, 320-330 (in Norton) Th, 10/5 Tintern Abbey (LB, 1798): count the Wordsworths! Contemporary Interlude II Thursday, October 5, 5pm Frank Bidart Morris Gray Reading Thompson Room [[Read selections from Watching the Spring Festival (2009) - Attendance Required]] MIDTERM PAPER DUE: Monday, 10/9, 5pm Part V. Ode (second take) Nature & the Supernatural Week 6: T, 10/10 Barbauld, An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestly s Study, (1771), A Summer Evening s Mediation (1773); Coleridge: The Eolean Harp, (1795), Kubla Khan (1797-98), This Limetree Bower My Prison & Frost at Midnight (1800), Dejection: an Ode (1802), The Pains of Sleep (1804), To William Wordsworth (1807); Wordsworth: Ode: Intimations of Immortality (1802) Th, 10/12 Coleridge, Christabel (1799ish) Meeting w/tf to discuss Midterm Paper Part VI. Autobiographical Narrative Week 7: T, 10/17 Wordsworth, selections from the Prelude (1805), pp. 356-91 Th, 10/19 Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805), pp. 391-402 Part VII. Lyric Week 8: T, 10/24 Blake, All Religions Are One, There Is No Natural Religion (1788), Songs of Innocence (1789); Blake, Songs of Experience (1794); The Marriage of Heaven & Hell (1793), A Song of Liberty (1792), from Blake s Notebooks, And did those feet (1804-10), Two Letters on Sight and Vision Houghton Library Visit Th, 10/26 The Book of Thel (1789) Small-group meetings with TF to discuss drafts of explication#2 Part VIII. Odes & Elegies (third take) Week 9: T, 10/31 Shelley: Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples (1818), To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud (1820), Adonais (1821) Th, 11/2 Shelley, Alastor (1816) lead us through a very close reading of ten lines of your choice SECOND EXPLICATION OF AN ODE or CONVERSATION POEM due Sunday, 5pm Part VII. Elegy & Monologue Week 10: T, 11/7 Whitman, Song of Myself (1855), Crossing Brooklyn Ferry (1856), Whitman, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom d (1864); Ginsberg, Howl (1956) - memorize a couple lines Small Group Sections w/tf Smith, Beachy Head (1806)
Th, 11/9 Dickinson, 340: I felt a Funeral in my Brain (1862); 591: I heard a Fly buzz (1863); 764: My Life had stood a Loaded Gun (1863) plus others Part VIII. Lyrical Narrative & Narrative Lyric Week 11: T, 11/16 T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land (1922), I-II Th, 11/18 The Waste Land, III-V memorize a couple lines Part VII. Lyric (nth take) Couplets (revisited) & Free Verse Week 12: T, 11/21 Walcott, The Bounty (1998) Th, 11/23 No Class - Thanksgiving Week 13: T, 11/28 Ammons, Garbage (1993) Th, 11/30 Ammons, Garbage; Armantrout, Entanglements (2017) Reading Period: review session (w/tf) & lyric practice (w/me) TBD PROSPECTUS FOR FINAL PAPER DUE Final Paper: In addition to the poetry on the syllabus, you might also consider writing about heavily edited poems such as: Christabel (Coleridge); The Eve of St. Agnes (Keats); The Triumph of Life (Shelley) 12/8 FINAL PAPER DUE TBD In-Class FINAL EXAM Assignments: Spontaneous Readings: six quick writing assignments about that day s reading, at the beginning of class scattered throughout the term. We ll count your top five. 5% Two Explications 1 of a poem (3pp): A careful reading of what a poem says and how it says it; 10% each Midterm Paper (5pp): A close reading of poetry from first half of the course; 15% Final Paper (7-8pp): A comparative analysis of different poems or versions of a poem (drafts, manuscript changes, &c) from the second half of the course; 20% Final Exam: a significant part of the exam is tied to the lyric assignment (see p. 6); 20% Attendance and Sections Participation / Assignments: please note the importance give to this 20% Reading Tips: Poetry has lines. It looks different than prose, and should sound and feel different too. You therefore need to read it differently: more slowly; for sound and rhythm as much as for meaning. You should read each poem more than once even the narrative ones. Your first time through, just try to get a feel for rhythm, imagery, ideas, voice. Try reading it out loud. Poetry makes different demands on you than the rest of the world typically does. It will take a while to adjust to reading it in the term, and each time you sit down with a poem it will take you a little while get into it. Reading for longer periods without any distraction is almost always more productive than reading in short, distracted bursts. Read with a pen in your hand mark down anything you notice. It helps you think, and later on it can help you remember what you were thinking. 1 Here s a pretty good explanation of an explication: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/poetryexplications/
No one can take in and understand a poem in its entirety, even a short lyric. Break it up into digestible chunks. When you re writing about a poem, you should read it fifteen to twenty times until it has dissolved into the deep tissues of your consciousness. All readings, aside from Paradise Lost, Our Andromeda, and Lighthead, are in the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Having the text before you in class is paramount a day w/o the textbook counts as an absence. The Fine Print Academic Honesty: Plagiarism is the use of another person s ideas or writing without giving them proper credit. It is extremely naughty. Consequences of plagiarism can range from failure on the paper to dismissal from the course to even more serious actions. You are responsible for familiarizing yourself with Harvard FAS s policies on Academic Honesty, available here: http://webdocs.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/ugrad_handbook/current/chapter2/academic_dishonesty.html Collaboration: You are absolutely encouraged to talk with other students about the course and its readings, and to read each others work. In individual assignments (which may include midterm or term papers, short writing assignments, homework or reading questions and responses, or take-home exams), academic collaboration and external sources should be cited. Attendance: Your attendance in class and in sections is vital to your own success as well as to the success of the class as a whole. I will allow each student a free absence to be used in case of sickness, travel, etc: no explanation necessary. Missing more than one class will decrease your participation grade, and excessive absence could result in failing the course. Also, being late really disrupts the class: 2 lates = 1 absence. If you have attenuating circumstances, you must communicate with me in a timely manner so that we can discuss how to deal with it. Computers, Tablets, Phones: No, no and no. No Google Glass or iwatches or Experimental US Military Augmented Reality Contact Lenses either. At least not in class. Email: I ll use our course listserv to distribute important info throughout the semester from emailing you handouts to adjusting assignments and deadlines. You are responsible for checking your email on a daily basis. If you have a question that you need to ask me by email, be sure to give me at least 24 hours, or you may not get a response until it's too late. Also, please let me know if you d like to use a non-harvard email address. Accommodations for students with disabilities: Students needing academic adjustments or accommodations because of a documented disability must present their Faculty Letter from the Accessible Education Office (AEO) and speak with the professor by the end of the second week of the term, (9/13/2017). Failure to do so may result in the Course Head's inability to respond in a timely manner. All discussions will remain confidential, although Faculty are invited to contact AEO to discuss appropriate implementation.