DuPlessis, HL7111, syllabus final version 1 Nanyang Technological University, Singapore School of Humanities, Literature Department Spring 2018 (double time course; full course in half a semester) COURSE NUMBER: Modern American Poetry. Course Code HL 7111 Meeting time: Wednesday and Friday afternoons, for 2 hours and 15 minutes (brief break included) Place: HSS Meeting Room 3 Instructor: Rachel Blau DuPlessis We will study United States modernist poetries up to the mid-thirties (with one exception from 1951). We will read a variety of figures, some in depth, from among Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Mina Loy, H.D., Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen. The course is interested in the ways ideologies and debates (about gender, ethnicity, class, national culture, religious culture, sexualities) emerge in poetic texts, not only as theme, but in the nature of subjectivities deployed and in the poetic texture. Emphasis will also be placed 1) on the form of the text and the work of form; 2) on poetics--assumptions about the practices of language, the functions of poetry. the theories behind the poem that characterize modernism; and 3) on affiliations--on the poets' interactions and literary connections in cohorts or dyads, sometimes contentious ones. One unit in the course exemplifying all three categories will involve reading T.S. Eliot s The Waste Land and then two of its poetic discussants : Williams, Spring and All, and Crane, The Bridge. The course offers introductory readings of complex works (coverage), acknowledges some under-read works along with some of the usual suspects (canon), and assesses the cultural work accomplished by the poetic texts. The course will be a seminar, involving discussion and student interventions via group questions as well as some lecture. Office hours and office number TBA All texts for this course are on reserve. Some books may be purchased by students who want those books. Other materials, particularly for the first day of class will be available on Blackboard. Note my wrangling these texts (done long-distance among Nanyang Technological University library, Blackboard, and available anthologies) might show slippage or error. If I am wrong about availability, don t worry just tell me. Also, read what you are able to lay your hands on. Students should and must share their access. Sometimes, however, in a recent anthology, the longer works might be represented by only one section! Do not be fooled; do not take the part for the whole.
DuPlessis, HL7111, syllabus final version 2 Texts may be found in Hart Crane, The Complete Poems of Hart Crane. Norton. There is also Hart Crane s The Bridge: an annotated edition, Fordham University Press, 2001. That last is apparently an e- book. ON RESERVE Countee Cullen. Try the Norton Anthology (either one) and the MAPS website. On Blackboard. H.D., Collected Poems, New Directions. [H.D. = Hilda Doolittle; she is known by those initials.] The early readings will be on Blackboard. T.S. Eliot, The Collected Poems (1909-1962), Harcourt. Alternative, any convenient edition of Eliot s poems, including several at the library. You may also use any convenient Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. ON RESERVE Langston Hughes. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. ed. Arnold Rampersad. This is available at Nanyang University Library. ON RESERVE. Vachel Lindsay. The Congo and Other Poems. This e-book is available via Nanyang University Library and the book should be down-loadable. Also on Blackboard. Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems of Mina Loy, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (publish on demand). Two essays by Loy on Blackboard. Marianne Moore, The Poems of Marianne Moore, Penguin Group. or Complete Poems. NY: Macmillan, 1994. ON RESERVE. Short poems and Marriage also on Blackboard. Ezra Pound, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound, New Directions. Also Faber. Also the book of early poems called Personae. There should be no problem finding Pound. Mauberley should be in a Norton anthology of Modern Poetry. The essay A Retrospect is on Blackboard The Gender of Modernism, ed. Bonnie Kime Scott. ON RESERVE. Gertrude Stein, Composition as Explanation (an essay) and Patriarchal Poetry (a poem/work/essay) are both in Stein, Writings, 1903-1932. NY: Library of America, 1998. Also ON RESERVE. Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, Knopf. There are other selections possible, including poems in anthologies. William Carlos Williams, The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, vol. I (1909-1939), New Directions. Spring and All is also available on Blackboard, and in two other books by
DuPlessis, HL7111, syllabus final version 3 Williams: Imaginations and a facsimile edition of Spring and All, both published by New Directions. The Norton Anthology of Modern American Poetry. The library has two editions. One ed, Ellmann and O Clair (1988). The other ed. Ramazani, Ellmann and O Clair (2003) there I think the title adds Modern and Contemporary. ON RESERVE. My note in Norton is keyed to the Table of Contents of the most recent. --A few important resources not on our list as texts. The Cambridge History of Modernism, Ed. Vincent Sherry. Cambridge University Press, 2017. On-Line availability at Nanyang Technological University Library. A website with sections on American poets and bits of literary criticism. www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets.htm This site is a decent source for odd poems that might not be available. I will say see MAPS if it is useful, but you may always look at it. If you use critical texts from it, you are obliged to acknowledge them of course. THE PAPER IN THIS COURSE: will consist of a close reading of a poem or section of a poem, compared with another poem (most likely by another poet), and a discussion of the poetics that animates this first poem and then this comparison. It will consist in some evaluation as possible of the social attitudes and the literary attitudes of this poem and poet. The paper will be around 6000 words long. It is a paper using your wits, poetic sensibility, and judgment, based on poems and texts in poetics. Any critical sources besides the words of the poets must be cleared with me. Week 1: January 17, 2018: Poems and modernizing poetics. Objectivist/Symbolist. Metonymy/Metaphor. Realism, imagism, Vorticism, the modern renaissance. Poetry Questions. **Eliot, "Preludes" (w. 1910-11; pub 1915); BLACKBOARD. Also see Norton **William Carlos Williams, (1917) ** January Morning" (1917) BLACKBOARD **Three handouts together as Poetics, class 1: Mini-Anthology on the Prose Tradition ; Tiny anthology of Statements about objectivist image in 20 th century poetry ; Mini-Anthology, Symbolist and Objectivist H.D., "Hermes of the Ways," (w. 1912); "Sea Rose" (1916); Orchard on BLACKBOARD. Also see Norton Pound, "In a Station of a Metro" (1913); Tsiai Chi-h, 108; "Apparuit," 68. "The Jewel Stairs' Grievance." BLACKBOARD. Also see Norton Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man" (1921), "Nuances of a Theme by Williams" (1918), "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (1917), "Anecdote of the Jar" (1919). Some are in Norton: Anecdote, Snow Man, 13 Ways,
DuPlessis, HL7111, syllabus final version 4 Elinor Wylie, Fairy Goldsmith (thoroughly unfair reading of convenience) BLACKBOARD **Another handout: Poetry Questions. Week 1: January 19, 2018: Canon and what is it? Making of poems, poets, poetic careers. Poets reading each other, reading the culture; cohort relations. Making a syllabus as a cultural act. **Pound, "Portrait d'une Femme" (1912), "Tenzone," The Condolence, Salutation the Second, The Commission, "The Garret," in the Pound on reserve. Portrait and Salutation the Second along with other poems [for the paper?] are on Blackboard as Pound, poems on gender. **Eliot, "Portrait of a Lady" (1910), "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1911), Hysteria" (1915). In the Eliot book on reserve. Portrait of a Lady on MAPS website. Williams, Portrait of a Lady, "Transitional" (1914); "Danse Russe" (1917); "The Young Housewife" (1916). In the Williams on reserve. Also see MAPS website, particularly Additional Poems. These four are also on Blackboard as Williams., poems on gender. Some of these poems will also be in the Norton. DISCUSSION OF PAPER REQUIREMENT IN THIS COURSE. See Incorporating poetics into your papers. On Blackboard. Week 2: January 24, 2018: Gender, sexuality and literary authority: Female Subjectivity **Loy, Parturition, Songs to Joannes. In the Loy on reserve. Parturition is also on Blackboard ** Loy, Feminist Manifesto ; in the Loy on reserve. Also on Blackboard as Loy, Essays.. **H.D., "Eurydice" (1917); "Sea Rose" (1916); "Fragment 36"; Helen. On Blackboard. see MAPS website also. Moore, ""The Monkeys" (1917), "Novices" (1923), "He Wrote the History Book" (1916), He Digesteth.... [the last for paper perhaps?]. On Blackboard. Week 2: January 26, 2018: New and Newer Woman ** Moore, "Marriage" (1923). On Blackboard **Loy, "The Effectual Marriage, or, The Insipid Narrative of Gina and Miovanni, ; "Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots." On Blackboard) Pound, The Ineffectual Marriage (excerpted from Loy), in Scott, ed. Gender of Modernism, on reserve. Week 3: January 31, 2018: Gender, sexuality and literary authority: Male Subjectivity **Pound, "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley" (1919-1920), and/or in the Norton Anthology (for annotations). Please note how to spell this title correctly. **DuPlessis handout For class on Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
DuPlessis, HL7111, syllabus final version 5 Week 3: February 2, 2018: POETICS READINGS: What questions to ask from poetics essays **See DuPlessis hand-out on Blackboard called Incorporating Poetics into your papers. **Pound, "A Retrospect," 1918 (which contains "A Few Don'ts," on Imagism, 1913), Literary Essays, 3-14. Also on Blackboard **Stein, Composition as Explanation (1926), Patriarchal Poetry (1926). on reserve. Stevens, On Marianne Moore AND A Poet that Matters [also on Moore]. On Blackboard. Loy, American Language (1925). on reserve. And on Blackboard in the Loy, essays packet. BLAST manifestoes, in the Caws, ed. on reserve, also in the Norton Anthology. Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent, in Norton Anthology. Also on MAPS website. Week 4: February 7, 2018: The New Negro, Cullen and Hughes and their debates including Poetics Readings **Countee Cullen, especially Yet Do I Marvel, Atlantic City Waiter, Incident, Uncle Jim, To Certain Critics, Heritage, Tableau on Blackboard. You might try a Norton for some of this. Also see MAPS. **Countee Cullen, Introduction to Caroling Dusk: An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets (1927) and Cullen s own self-written biography (in same pdf) **Countee Cullen, Poet on Poet. A review on Langston Hughes. **Langston Hughes, especially The Negro Speaks of Rivers (1926) America, The Weary Blues (1926) Theme for English B, this last in Montage of a Dream Deferred (see last week, last day, on Blackboard). **Langston Hughes, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. On MAPS website. Week 4: February 9, 2018: Black and White **Vachel Lindsay, "The Congo" (1914) from the Lindsay, ON RESERVE. On Blackboard. See also MAPS website. Eliot, "Sweeney Agonistes" (1923-24, pub. 1927) Stevens, Bantams in Pine-Woods in Norton Anthology. Pound, Doggerel Section from a letter to Marianne Moore. In The Gender of Modernism, ed. Bonnie Kime Scott. ON RESERVE Week 5: February 14, 2018: The Waste Land **Eliot, The Waste Land (1922). Title underscore? or quotation marks? Is it IN a book, or is it a book that s what this depends on. Just make sure you have all three words in the title: the, waste, land.
DuPlessis, HL7111, syllabus final version 6 Other Sources: T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land. A Facsimile and Transcript of the Original Drafts Including the Annotations of Ezra Pound. Ed. Valerie Eliot February 15, 2018 [note shift in class DAY; Singapore holiday on February 16] **Eliot, The Waste Land (1922) ** A selection of comments by T.S. Eliot about The Waste Land. Blackboard Week 6: Other Views of Modernity: The Waste Land and its discussants February 21, 2018: **Williams, Spring and All (1923) Note there s a short poem called Spring and All by Williams. This is not what I mean as your reading. I mean the whole book called Spring and All. On Blackboard. Read all (including the Introduction, of course) Week 6: February 23, 2018: Williams continued, **Williams, Spring and All (1923) Three essays or statements in poetics by Williams: from his Autobiography, on T.S. Eliot, an essay called Marianne Moore, and Poem as Field of Action. On Blackboard. Week 7: Other Views of Modernity: The Waste Land and its discussants February 28, 2018: **Hart Crane, The Bridge (1923-1930) Week 7: March 2, 2018: **Hart Crane, The Bridge (1923-1930) ALSO Paper drafts or issues. Week 8 March 7, 2018: Reprise Stevens. Of Mere Being" (1955), Sea Surface Full of Clouds (1924) Angel Surrounded by Paysans (1949), The House Was Quiet (1945), Of Modern Poetry (1940 ), Of Mere Being (1955). And possible reprise of the Stevens from Class 1: The Snow Man" (1921), "Nuances of a Theme by Williams" (1918), "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (1917), "Anecdote of the Jar" (1919). March 9, 2018: Hughes (big exception to course cut-off date) Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951). Papers due on a date to be announced, probably at least two weeks after class ends.