Spring 1999, Chess

Instructor: Chess
Office: KH 219
Phone: 251-6576
E-mail: rchess@unca.edu
Office Hours: MWF 11 - Noon or by appointment

Required Texts

Leaves of Grass: Norton Critical Edition,Whitman
Selected Poems, Williams, W. C.
A Muriel Rukeyser Reader, Rukeyser
Kaddish and Other Poems, Ginsberg
An Atlas of the Difficult World, Rich
This Time: New and Selected Poems, Stern
What Work Is, Levine
The Dream of the Unified Field, Graham
Neon Vernacular, Komunyakaa
The Essential Rumi, Rumi

Possible Web Site

I had hoped to develop a web site to accompany this course. In fact, I have begun one, but as of today there’s not much to it. Nevertheless, you might find what’s there useful. So check in periodically and see if it is growing.

Purpose

Poetic influence can work in many ways. A poet could directly imitate a predecessor’s style. A poet could derive a principal of versification from his/her predecessor but apply the principal in a new way. A poet could choose to reject his/her predecessor’s aesthetic/vision and write in such a way as to stand in opposition to him or her. In this class, we’ll try to identify specific ways the work of Whitman has influenced the work of these particular poets who follow him (Rumi actually precedes Whitman, but the versions of Rumi we read definitely exhibit Whitman’s influence). As we go along, we’ll also try to articulate as precisely as we can each poet’s aesthetic and vision.

Looking at poems in relation to each other this way will inevitably lead to the question of originality. Is original work that which introduces a wholly new way of writing or seeing? Is original work that which uses conventions in an original way?

Additionally, we’ll want to pay particular attention to the practice and development of free verse in American poetry over the course of the last 150 years or so. And we may want to ask whether developments in free verse occur in response to changing political/cultural/social conditions or as a result of an organic tendency toward the growth of the verse form itself.

I expect you to keep up with the reading assignments. Our discussions will almost always be based on close readings of the assigned texts. We will read many more poems than we will actually discuss in class. For our discussions, I’ll try to select key poems that typify what’s going on in a poet’s work. Our discussions of these key poems should enable you to go back to other poems and reread them with greater insight.

You are also required to do one project. I know that some of you are poets yourselves. I guess that some of you may be taking this class because you’d like to learn things that you can use in your own writing, whether it’s poetry or imaginative prose. With this in mind, I’d like to offer you all the opportunity to work on projects that will be meaningful to you. So, I’m giving you the option of producing either an academic paper or a creative project or a combination of the two. Accompanying this syllabus you’ll find a list of a few possible topics for/approaches to projects.

To keep you focussed, I am requiring you to turn in two proposals, one preliminary and one revised and refined, for the project. Each will be graded. Elsewhere in the syllabus you’ll find guidelines for these proposals.

Also, there will be a mid-term and a final exam, both of which will probably be take-home essay exams.

I will ask you to do a brief presentation of your project to the entire class.

Grades

Mid-Term and Final: @ 15% 30%
Proposal #1: 10%
Proposal #2: 10%
Project: 50%
Schedule

Week 1

1/20 Intro to Class

1/22 Intro Continued

Week 2

1/25 Voices and Visions: Walt Whitman: video

1/27 Voices and Visions: Walt Whitman: video

1/29 "Song of Myself"

Week 3

2/1 "Song of Myself"

2/3 "Song of Myself"

2/5 "I Sing the Body Electric," "A Woman Waits for Me," "Spontaneous Me," "One Hour to Madness and Joy," "As Adam Early in the Morning"

Week 4

2/8 "In Paths Untrodden," "Scented Herbage of My Breast," "Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand," "When I Heard at the Close of Day," "City of Orgies," "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing"

2/10 "Song of the Open Road," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

2/12 "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

Week 5

2/15 "First O Songs for a Prelude," "Cavalry Crossing a Ford," "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night," "The Wound Dresser"

2/17 "When Lilacs Last on the Dooryard Bloom’d"

2/19 "The Sleepers," "The Dismantled Ship"

Week 6

2/22 Voices and Visions: William Carlos Williams

2/24 Voices and Visions: William Carlos Williams

readings TBA

2/26

Week 7

3/1 "The Desert Music" and "Journey to Love"

3/3 "Pictures from Brueghel"

3/5

Week 8

3/8 Rukeyser

"Theory of Flight" 1 - 28

3/10 Proposals Due

3/12 "U. S. 1" 29 - 50

Week 9

3/15 Ginsberg’s "Kaddish" (read the title poem in its entirety)

3/17 Mid-Term Handed Out

3/19 Mid-Term Due

Week 10

3/22 - 3/26 Spring Break

Week 11

3/29 Rich, "At Atlas of a Difficult World"

3/31

4/2 Revised Proposals Due

Week 12

4/5 Levine, "What Work Is"

4/7

4/9

Week 13

4/12 Stern

"Lucky Life" 31 - 66

4/14

4/16 "New Poems" 267 - 284

Week 14

4/19 Graham

"Hybrids of Plants and Ghosts"

"Erosion"

4/21

4/23 "The End of Beauty" and "Materialism"

Week 15

4/26 Komunyakaa

"New Poems"

4/28 No Classes

4/30 "Copacetic" and " Dien Cai Dau"

Week 16

5/3 Presentations

5/5 Presentations

5/7 Presentations

Week 17

5/10 Rumi

FINAL

5/19 (Weds.) Final Exam Due, Finish Presentations, Party

Projects

One way to approach the project is do something (a critical/scholarly work or creative work) that Whitman might find of interest. For instance, in the spirit of Whitman you could do some volunteer work over the course of the semester and then write a group of poems that report on what you experienced. For instance, say you are a volunteer for Meals on Wheels. You’ve probably had numerous encounters with older adults in their homes. You could do a series of poems based on the lives of the people to whom you deliver meals. You could also volunteer say at a homeless shelter or in a local government office. Something that will bring you into direct contact with people in situations/circumstances unlike your own. If you produce a group of poems, I recommend that you also write a brief paper (1 - 2 typed pages) in which you discuss the connection between your work and Whitman’s, your America and his. The paper could also discuss how your style/vision is also influenced by one or more of the other poets whose work we’ll read this semester. The key here is specificity. You must articulate clearly and directly what the influences are.

Another possibility is to identify the central issues that inform our American lives today and then to attend lectures by experts speaking on one of these issues, or watch PBS or C-Span or other network programming on the issue and then write a group of poems in the spirit and/or style of Whitman/Williams/Rukeyser/Rich/Levine/Ginsberg/Stern/Komunyakaa etc. that address in an effective poetic manner these issues. Again, a brief critical/reflective paper accompanying the poems would probably be useful–both to yourself and to me–if you choose this approach.

There are many other possibilities for creative projects. You decide what you’d like to do and then present a proposal to me. I reserve the right to redirect or reject your proposal.

For your project, you may also choose to write a scholarly paper (this kind of paper should include research) on any number of topics.

1. Free Verse: How has it developed over the last 140 years or so? Have certain conventions of free verse been established during this period? Have those conventions been broken or extended in any way by any of the poets we’ve read or by poets whose work we have not read together? Have changes in the way free verse is written occured organically, as a natural part of the growth and development of the verse form, or do these changes reflect changing social/political/cultural/scientific conditions?

2. Poetry and American Life: What role does poetry play in American life? How has that role changed or remained the same from the time of Whitman to the present?

3. Publishing: Trade/University/Small/Vanity Presses: Many editions of Leaves of Grass were published by Whitman himself. What are the attitudes toward self-publishing today? Who self-publishes and why? What about the role of trade, university and small presses in publishing and promoting poetry?

4. America’s Poet: What is the role of the U. S. Poet Laureate? To what extent have our poets laureate over the last decade or so embodied Whitman’s vision?

5. Politics and Poetry: How have have poets at different times in American life addressed national issues–political, social, cultural, etc.–in their work?

6. Sexuality: What were the attitudes toward sexuality during the time Whitman was writing? How does Whitman represent sexuality in his work? What are our attitudes toward sexuality today? If Whitman were writing today, how might he represent sexuality? Who are the sexual rebels of our time?

7. Obscenity/Pornography: Whitman and Ginsberg both have written work considered by some to be obscene or pornographic. During Whitman’s time, what standards were used to determine whether something was obscene? During Ginsberg’s time? What standards are used today? In what ways have other poets pushed against the limits of what’s considered to be socially acceptable material?

8. Workers and Work: In his work, Whitman tried to shine his light on those people living and working in the shadows of American life. Who were those people in Whitman’s day? Who are those people today? How can a poet write about these people without sentimentalizing and stereotyping them?

9. I, Me and Mine: The Self: How has the concept of self as represented in poetry changed over time? What accounts for these changes? What theories of self influenced Whitman? What theories have influenced other poets throughout the 20^th Century?

10. The American Idiom: How do American poems reflect American speech patterns and habits?

11. Race in America: How does Whitman represent blacks in his poetry? What are his attitudes toward race? What are the racial issues of our time, our particular place (Asheville, the South, the East, the U. S.? How can these issues be dealt with effectively?

12. Vision and the Visionary: What is a visionary poetic? Is anyone writing visionary poetry today? How can serious, successful visionary poetry be written today? Can it be written today?

Proposals

Proposals for both scholarly and creative projects must include the following:

a. clear statement of the topic

b. statement of thesis

c. discussion of method

An example of how to approach a proposal for a creative project:

Whitman is famous for his use of parallelism, a rhetorical pattern he drew from the King James Version of the Bible. When we say "parallelism," we may think we are referring to one kind of parallelism. Actually, Whitman uses a variety of kinds of parallelisms to introduce variety, balance, and momentum into his work. Whitman’s work often creates a sense of balance: good and evil are balanced, man and woman, white and black, worker and owner, thief and law-abiding citizen. The rhetorical pattern expresses his vision: a nation of equals, a true democracy. (Seems like a radical idea, doesn’t it?) In contrast to Whitman’s idealized vision of America, the America we live in is splintered into many small groups–whose interests are often at odds with one another. Our country seems to be living through a period of deep divisions. Whitman’s symmetrical, balanced syntactical patterns seem wrong to express the situation of American life in our time. What’s called for instead is a fragmented syntax. In this project, I propose to do two things: 1) discuss the work of poets such as C. D. Wright who experiment with radically fragmented syntax, and 2) write a group of experimental poems on American subjects that use fragmented syntax. For instance, I may write a few poems about Eagle Street in Asheville. Eagle: an American symbol. What’s the actual Eagle Street like? What’s its history? What is it like today? And I will write these poems in a fragmented style such as this:

In contrast
to such as, Eagle
balanced wrong

to express
splintered
we live.