English 220: The Web of American Poetry
May 2010

Wes Chapman
English House 205
556-3090
wchapman@iwu.edu

The Web of American Poetry is founded on a central working assumption: poems take much of their meaning from the many contexts into which they can be placed. Poems allude to or borrow styles, techniques or ideas from previous works; they rebel against earlier poetic traditions; they aspire to emulate other arts, such as painting or music; they converse with history, politics and religion. Learning to interpret American poetry, then, is in large part a matter of recognizing the strands of meaning that connect particular poems in a web of meanings, and of seeing a particular poem against the backdrop of American poetry as a whole and its social and historical contexts. In this course, we will trace some of these strands of meaning in American poetry from the Puritan era to the second half of the 20th C.

Required Texts

• The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Seventh Edition, Volumes 1 and 2.
• readings from the Web (URLs listed on the syllabus)

Course Requirements

Your grade will be based on the following:

• a microessay (10%)
• a short paper (20%)
• an oral interpretation of a poem, with interpretive framing (20%)
• a map of American poetry (50%)

All of the above will be graded on or converted to a 0-100 scale, where 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, 60-69 = D, and 0-59 = F. The highest three numbers in a range are equivalent to a plus grade (e.g. 87-89 = B+); the lowest three are equivalent to a minus (e.g. 90-92 = A-).

Attendance: No more than 2 absences for any reason, including illness and university sponsored events, are allowed. I will deal with attendance problems on a case-by-case basis, but I reserve the right to lower your final grade by 5 points for each class missed beyond the 2 course limit. Very poor attendance will result in a failing grade regardless of your grades on the work listed above.

Late Work : Your grade on a late assignment will be lowered by 4 points (out of 100) for every calendar day any part of it is late. Because an F at 50 will bring down a grade much less than an F at 0, it is nearly always better to turn in an assignment late than not to turn it in at all.

Participation in discussion is important in this class. Although there is no separate grade rubric for participation, active and thoughtful participation in class may raise a borderline grade, while passive or disruptive participation may lower one. (A borderline grade is defined as a grade within .9 of a point of the cutoff between two grades. For example, 90 is the cutoff between B+ and A-; 89.1 - 90.9 is the borderline range between the two grades.)

Plagiarism will affect your grade in one of two ways. If you turn in work that is plagiarized in minor or unintentional ways (e.g. you use the language of the source you are writing about without quotes, but in only a brief passage and clearly without any intention to represent someone else's work as your own), the work will receive an F, and we will discuss plagiarism until it is clear that you understand what it is and how to avoid it. You may be able to rewrite such work for a higher grade if there is enough time left in the term. However, if you turn in work which is plagiarized blatantly, at length or with apparent intent to deceive, you will receive an F in the course regardless of any other grades you have received, and I will file an Academic Dishonesty Report with the Associate Provost.

Tentative Course Schedule

All poems are in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter Seventh Edition, unless otherwise noted. Page numbers begin with the volume number followed by a period. Please bring the book(s) we are discussing to class.

W 5/5 Introduction and a whirlwind tour.

• Puritans. Read during the break: Edward Taylor, "Huswifery" (1.142)
• Early National Period. Read during the break: Philip Freneau, "On Mr. Paine's Rights of Man" (online at <"http://www2.latech.edu/~bmagee/212/freneau/rights_man.htm>).
• 19th C part 1: The Fireside Poets.Read during the break: William Cullen Bryant, "To a Waterfowl" (1.479); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "A Psalm of Life" (1.645-646).
• Read when you can: "Pilgrim and Puritan" (1.9-11;, "A Expanding World and Universe" and "Enlightenment Ideals" (1.151-154); "An American Renaissance?" (1.431-432).
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors

Th 5/6 The Whirlwind tour continued.

• 19th C part 2: innovators. Reading: Walt Whitman, "Facing West from California's Shores" (1.1057); Emily Dickinson, 1263 (1.1221 or 2.93).
• Modernism. Reading: Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (2.821-823; "American Versions of Modernism" (2.712-715).
• The Harlem Renaissance. Reading: Langston Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (2.1089); section in "Changing Times" on the Harlem Renaissance (2.708).
• The Contemporary Period. Reading: Michael Harper, "American History" (2.1555); Jorie Graham, "The Geese" (2.1626-1627); "Literary Developments," starting with the section on contemporary poetry (2.1133-1138)
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors

First Thread: Reading the Book of Nature

F 5/7

• A modern example and a Puritan source. Readings: Robert Frost, "Design" (2.788); Edward Taylor, "Upon a Wasp Chilled with Cold" (1.141-2)
• A Fireside poet and two English sources. Readings: William Cullen Bryant, "Thanatopsis" (1.477-478); excerpts from two British poems (Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and Gray's "Elegy," to be handed out in class.
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors

Sunday 5/9: MICROESSAY DUE BY NOON. Attach it to an email in .doc or .docx format. (If you don't use Microsoft Word, make alternate arrangements with me beforehand.)

M 5/10

• More of the same, or something new? Transcendentalism and its aftermath. Readings: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Each and All" (1.565-566), "Brahma" (1.569) and "The Snow-Storm" (online at <http://www.bartleby.com/248/155.html>; Walt Whitman, "A Noiseless Patient Spider" (online at <http://www.bartleby.com/142/208.html>) and part 6 of "Song of Myself" (1.1014-1015).
  
• Dickinson the skeptic--and back to Frost. Readings:: Emily Dickinson, 207 (1.1203), 320 (1.258), 1096 (1.1220), 1263 (1.1221), "Perception of an object costs" (online at <http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/emily_dickinson/poems/7206>); Robert Frost, "The Need of Being Versed in Country Things" (online at <http://www.bartleby.com/155/8.html>, "The Most of It" (source TBA).
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors

T 5/11

• Other forms of modernism, reading...something... Readings: Wallace Stevens, "Anecdote of the Jar" (2.821) and "The Idea of Order at Key West" (2.823-824)
• Contemporary nature-readers. Readings: Allen Ginsburg, "A Supermarket in California" (2.1425) and "Sunflower Sutra" (online at <http://www.boppin.com/sunflower.html>); A. R. Ammons, "Corsons Inlet" (2.1409-1412).
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors

W 5/12 - Reading day or catch-up day if needed.

Second Thread: American or European?

Th 5/13

• The doubleness of American poetry. Readings: Philip Freneau, "The Indian Burying Ground" (1.417-418); Joel Barlow, Canto I of "The Hasty-Pudding" (online at <http://www.mundanebehavior.org/outburst/schwetman-05022002/canto1.html>); excerpts from Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock" and Virgil's Aeneid (handout).
• One way to do something different: Poe. Readings: Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven" (1.675-678), "Annabel Lee" (1.678-679),"To Helen" (online at <http://www.bartleby.com/102/91.html>), "The Poetic Principle" (excerpts TBA; at http://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/poetprnd.htm) and "The Philosophy of Composition" (1.724-732).
• Also read: "American Literary Nationalism in the 1820s" (1.432-436)
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors
  

F 5/14

• And another way. Readings: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet" (1.550-565); "Merlin" (1.566-569)
• More--a lot more--of the same. Reading: Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" (1011-1055).
• Recommended: headnote on Emerson
• DRAFT OF MAP DUE

M 5/17

• The heck with it--the expatriates. Readings: Ezra Pound, all poems in the Norton (2.842-848) and the first third or so (from the beginning through the end of "A Few Don'ts") of "A Retrospect" (online at <http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/retrospect.htm>); H.D., all poems in the Norton Anthology (2.849-854).
• Recommended: headnotes on Pound and H.D.

T 5/18

• Expatriates continued. Reading: T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" (2.869-881)
• Recommended: headnote on Eliot

W 5/19 - Reading day or catch-up day if needed.

Th 5/20

• Meanwhile, back home. Readings: William Carlos Williams, "Spring and All" (2.836) "To Elsie" (2.836-838), "A Sort of a Song" (2.839), prose excerpts from Spring and All (handout).
• Another poet of the particular. Readings: Marianne Moore, "Poetry" (2.855-856), "To a Snail" (2.856-857), "The Paper Nautilus" (2.857-858), and "The Mind is an Enchanting Thing" (2.858-859).
• Recommended: headnotes on Williams and Moore

Third Thread: The Twoness of African-American Poetry

F 5/21

• You think you have trouble with tradition? Readings: Phillis Wheatley: "On Being Brought From Africa to America" (1.420-421); Paul Laurence Dunbar, "When Malindy Sings" (642-644), "Sympathy" (2.646), "We Wear the Mask" (2.646-647); Langston Hughes, "I, Too" (2.1090), "The Weary Blues" (2.1090-1091), "Theme for English B" (2.1094-1095).
• After the Harlem Renaissance. Readings: Robert Hayden, "Middle Passage" (2.1242-1247); "Those Winter Sundays" (2.1248); Gwendolyn Brooks, all poems in the Norton Anthology (2.1361-1365; Amiri Baraka, "A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand" (online at <http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~hartleyg/docs/somepeople.html>); "Black Art" (online at <http://www.nathanielturner.com/blackart.htm>).
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors

Saturday 5/22, midnight: SHORT PAPER DUE

Fourth Thread: From the Barefoot Rank to a Female Poetic Tradition

M 5/24

• Obnoxious to each carping tongue--maybe. Readings: Anne Bradstreet, "The Prologue" (1.98-99), "The Author to Her Book" (1.106-107), "To My Dear and Loving Husband" (1.108), "In Memory of My Dear Grandchild..." (1.109)
• The Barefoot Rank. Readings: Emily Dickinson, 112 (1.1201), 202 (1.1203), 260 (1.1204), 269 (1.1205), 320 (1.1205), 340 (1.1207), 348 (1.1208-1209), 409 (1.1212), 446 (1.1213), 448 (1.1214), 479 (1.1214-1215), 519 (1.1215), 598 (1.1216), 620 (1.1216), 788 (1.1219), 1577 (1.1221), "Satisfaction - is the Agent" and "I Stepped from Plank to Plank" (handout).
• Recommended: headnotes on Bradstreet and Dickinson

T 5/25

• Armor. Reading Marianne Moore, "The Pangolin" (online at <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-pangolin/>).
• Another view of armor. Reading: Sylvia Plath, all poems in the Norton Anthology (2.1475-1483).
• Treasure-Hunting. Readings: H.D., "Fragment 113" (2.852-853), "Helen" (2.853); Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck"2.1450-1452), "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" (online at <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aunt-jennifer-s-tigers/>), (667-669).
• Recommended: headnotes on all authors

W 5/26 FIRST DAY OF ORAL INTERPRETATIONS.

Th 5/27

• Last day of class. Catch-up day if needed; evaluations. FINAL DRAFTS OF MAPS DUE.

F 5/28 - Final exam period: ORAL INTERPRETATIONS.

Teaching Notes

A word of caution: these are teaching notes, not handouts designed primarily for students. They should be taken as plans only, not as representations of what actually happened in class. Many things are mentioned in the notes that we did not get to, and we often got to things in class that are not mentioned in my notes (or that are indicated only by questions or by mentions of passages I wanted to look at).

• 5/5/10 - Introduction and part 1 of the whirlwind tour.
• 5/6/10 - Part 2 of the whirlwind tour.
• 5/7/10 - Reading the book of nature, part 1: Frost, Taylor, Bryant.
• 5/10/10 - Reading the book of nature, part 2: Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, then back to Frost.
• 5/11/10 - Reading the book of nature, part 3: Stevens, Ginsberg, Ammons.
• 5/13/10 - American or European, part 1: Barlow, Freneau, Poe.
• 5/14/10 - American or European, part 2: Emerson and Whitman.
• 5/17/10 - American or European, part 3: Pound and H.D.
• 5/18/10 - American or European, part 4: Eliot.
• 5/20/10 - American or European, part 5: Williams and Moore.
• 5/21/10 - The Two-ness of African-American Poetry.
• 5/24/10 - From the Barefoot-Rank to a Female Poetic Tradition, part 1: Bradstreet, Dickinson, and Moore.
• 5/25/10 - From the Barefoot-Rank to a Female Poetic Tradition, part 2: Plath, H.D., and Rich.