The Glossary of Poetic Terms is here. Also, our own Lisa was kind enough to post another link under the comments section in an earlier post. Use whichever works for you and have a wonderful weekend. (Don't forget Frank O'Hara!)

Erasure Link

COURSE POLICY & SYLLABUS

Writing Poetry
Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
KH 207
Sophia Kartsonis
zeldaville@yahoo.com

Text:
Various online poems. Please have a printout available for days we are discussing them.
Optional: Rhyme’s Reason by John Hollander. http://www.amazon.com/Rhymes-Reason-Guide-English-Verse/dp/0300088329/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274092178&sr=8-1
Available online at Amazon for a song.


Course Policy:
Attendance:
Because we are taking a fast train through the subject matter, as summer courses often require, attendance will be crucial. We will be reading a lot and dealing with that reading in class with writing assignments and activities.
You will be afforded one absence for reasons I will not need to know. I do not excuse any absence after that first one and if you accrue two absences (as the course is so short,) I will likely ask that you drop the course.

Tardies: After two you have an absence.

Grades: You will be graded heavily on class participation and attendance: (30%) Your written work will comprise 70% of your total grade. Perfect attendance does not mean that you have that 30% guaranteed. I expect lively discussions and real engagement with the topics. I hate to resort to pop quizzes, but if during discussion it becomes apparent that a few of us have done the reading and the rest are coasting, I will administer a quiz.

The written work will consist of some reading responses, many in-class exercises, and the “letters to the authors” and comments on workshop poems. Please be generous and thoughtful in your assessments and comments on other’s work.

Cell Phones: Please turn them off. Brain surgery can wait.

I am available to conference with you at any time throughout the course. Please contact me in class or through the email address and we can set a time to meet.

MAY
M 16 Introduction. Discussion of James Dickey's Falling
Assignment: Your own poem inspired by a news piece or fairytale or myth.
T: 17 Ekphrasis Assignment: Go to museum, select a piece of art and jot down a minimum of 25 concrete words about it. Write a poem using as many of the words as you and assonance, alliteration, consonance, a simile and/or a metaphor.
W: 18 Workshop of News poems.
H 19: Discussion of Auden and your ekphrasis poems.
Homework: Write a poem based on negation. Read Free Verse: Frank O’Hara: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ohara/ohara.htm
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=5092
Fun to Browse through online (Poet Among Painters)
http://books.google.com/books?id=31Pqv32Fh0QC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Frank+O%27Hara&source=bl&ots=uAhwh65_YB&sig=buEKI5iTf6_xVgp1d4ampXehGaQ&hl=en&ei=XiXxS-DzJsT38Aby2ND9Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=12&ved=0CDQQ6AEwCw#v=onepage&q&f=false
In-Class Writing.

F 20: Poetic Terms. Discussion of blank verse and free verse. Voices and Visions Robert Frost. In-Class Writing.
Homework: Bring in some song lyrics that you consider to be a poem or to be poetic. If possible, bring us the means to hear or play the song, as well as access to the lyrics on the page. (You can use the computer and projector so as to save the environment some grief.) Anyway, using your new shiny terms of poetry, talk about how and why this piece strikes you as poetic.
M 23: Discussion of song lyrics and verse. Introduction to Formal Verse.
Homework: Write a sonnet, villanelle or sestina. Bring in enough copies for the class.
T 24 workshop formal poems Possible Hart Crane video.
homework: Begin to think about your long poem. (Two pages or so.)
W 25 Discussion: The Long Poem Hart Crane, Walt Whitman, Eliot Khalil Wilson, Taij Silverman
H 26 Workshop of your long poems.
F 22 Your rewrites are due. A significant rewrite of four of the poems you've done for class.
Two-Day Caesura

Thank you, Omar for this idea.

Here's the painting:

and the poem:
Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.


In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

and a take by William Carlos Williams:

William Carlos Williams

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

Writing Poetry Update for Tuesday

Greetings,

Your course policy is forthcoming, but for now, please note that we will start as per our discussion today, at 9:15. Make sure to bring your poems as we will distribute them for a Wednesday workshop.

Update all lit. classes

Poetry of Witness & Survival: We'll be discussing Fellner's book and reading and be starting Sean Thomas Dougherty tomorrow and reaching into Thursday.

Contemporary Literature: I have a medical appointment to attend at noon and will therefore, be giving you a day off. Please be ready to discuss Fellner's work and reading on Thursday.



ALL STUDENTS IN ATTENDANCE OF STEVE FELLNER'S READING: Thank you--even though you know that there was much to be gained by having been there. (As with most of life...)
I noted your attendance and as it was mandatory, it will be very useful for the upcoming grading for the class. Those of you there and perfect with your questions and engagement, made me feel proud (once again, as always) to have you in my classes. Steve remarked several times at the intelligence and poise of our students here.