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FINAL EXAM: Wednesday, December 15, 2:15-4:15. In our usual classroom (206 EPB): you are welcome to use your notes and a dictionary. Part one of the exam will consist of 15 or so short passages of poetry by the seven poets we've studied. You will simply identify who wrote each passage. This part of the exam should take about 15 minutes. The rest of the time will be devoted to writing five short essays on five passages of poetry. Here are the instructions that will be on the exam: "Read the following passages. In the space following each passage identify the poet and in a concise paragraph tell why you know the passage is by that particular poet. Deal with form, structure, images, themes, ideas, language, attitudes, tone--all the aspects of the passage that help you make the identification. Be sure your comments are specific to and relevant to the passage you are working with. Recall, but do not limit yourself to, class discussions in order to arrive at your answers. Be sure your paragraph responds directly to the passage (don't write an all-purpose paragraph that would cover everything written by that particular poet), and be sure to give a sense of what the passage is about and how it works. The strongest answers will illuminate the passage and will highlight those elements in the passage that most clearly associate it with the other poetry you've read by the same poet."

For Friday, December 10: We'll conclude our discussion of Komunyakaa, starting wtih "Facing It." Think about how the series of images that he moves through as he faces the black granite wall of the Viet Nam Memorial work. Try to find out enough about Andrew Johnson in American history to figure out why it's bizarrely appropriate that he touches that particular name with its particular sharp resonance in American history. Think through Komunyakaa's poem to Whitman ("Kosmos," available below and on the handout) again, and ask what kind of closure that poem brings to our course.

For Wednesday, December 8: We will continue discussing Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular. We'll finish the discussion of "You and I Are Disappearing," and we'll look together at the "Kosmos" poem (reprinted below and on the handout I gave you in class on Monday). Also re-read carefully "Facing It" (p. 159). We will talk in more detail about the final exam.

For Monday, December 6: Bring both your Rich and Komunyakaa books; we'll finish up with Rich and start Komunyakaa. Read particularly carefully the Dien Cai Dau section of Neon Vernacular (pp. 137-159), and look at these pictures of the war, with the now iconic picture of the naked girl whose skin was burned by napalm dropped on her village. Look, too, at the short video of that napalm attack and its aftermath (just below the picture). Then read again "You and I Are Disappearing" (p. 142). Listen to Komunyakaa read the poem here. Try to figure out how each of the twelve or so similes in this poem work to respond to the unspeakable image of the girl in flames from napalm. Komunyakaa gives us an improvisational catalog of seemingly unrelated images. How do the images relate? What is the effect of this cascade of strange images? Write out a paragraph (to be handed in) about at least two of the images in that poem. Read Komunyakaa's "Kosmos" (below), his direct response to Whitman, and look up words and references you don't understand. What is Komunyakaa saying to Whitman? If you prefer, you can write your paragraph response to some aspect of this poem instead of to "You and I Are Disappearing."

KOSMOS

You shanghaied me to this oak,
Every blood-tipped leaf
Soliloquizing Bille's "Strange Fruit,"
Like that octoroon in New Orleans

Who showed you how passion
Ignited dogwoods, how it came
From inside the singing sap. You
Heard primordial notes of jazz

Murmuring up from the Mississippi,
A clink of chains in the green jurisdiction
Of ithyphallic totems, thinking your heart
Could run vistas with Crazy Horse

& runaway slaves. Sunset dock
To whorehouse, temple to hovel,
Your lines traversed America's
White space, driven by a train's syncopation.

Believing you could be everywhere
At once, you held the gatekeeper's daughter,
Lured by the hard eyes of his son,
On a voyage in your head

Like a face cut into Mount Rushmore.
You knew the curse that was in the sperm
& egg, but had faith in the soil,
That it'd work itself out in generations,

How underground springs pierced bedrock.
How love pushed through jailhouse walls. Into the bedrooms
presidents & horse thieves,
Like oil sucked through machines in sweatshops

& factories. I followed you from my hometown
Where bedding an oak is bread on the table,
When your books, as if of flesh, were locked
In a glass case behind the check-out desk.

Wind-jostled foliage--a scherzo
Like a bellydancer adorned in bells.
A mulatto moon halved into yesterday
& tomorrow, a strange baluster

Full-bloomed. But you taught me home
Was wherever my feet took me,
Birdsong over stockyards or Orient.
Fused by handshake & blood,

Seed & testament, naked
Among fire-nudged thistle,
From the Rockies to below
Sea level, to the steamy bayous,

I traipsed your footpaths,
Falsehoods lay across the road,
Beside a watery swoon,
Stumblingblocks big as logs.

I'm back with the old folk who speak
In tongues, like your glossolalia
Of pure sense unfolding a hundred years.
Unlocked chemistry, we're tied to sex,

Spectral flower twisted out of the filigree
Of language, worked into a hope
Stubborn as crabgrass. You camped out,
Nude under god-hewn eyes.

Laughter in the trees behind a canebreak,
I know what song. Old hippie,
Before Selma & People's Park,
Your democratic nights were a vortex

Of waterlilies. The skin's cage
Opened by the mind. Everything
Flew apart, but came back like birds
To a tree after the blast of a shotgun.

For Friday, December 3: Your essays are due in class; details here. We'll finish discussing Rich's Diving into the Wreck. Please read carefully again "Incipience," "Rape," "From a Survivor," and "The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood At Last As a Sexual Message." Listen to the final movement of the symphony here, with Schiller's "Ode to Joy," and note how both "Freunde" ("Friends") and "Freude" ("Joy") are shouted at the beginning of the choral part of the movement. Does Rich's poem work to diminish the powerful impact of this music? Does it make you like Beethoven more or less, or is that the point of the poem? Be sure you have read Yusef Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular, paying particular attention to his poems about the Vietnam War, Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for "crazy in the head") on pp. 137-159. Read around in Neon Vernacular as much as you can, and be sure to read the following sections of the book: "New Poems," "Lost in the Bonewheel Factory," "I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head."

For Wednesday, December 1: You're working on finishing up your third essay, on Hughes or Williams; details here. And you're polishing your second memorization, which you will recite along with your first memorization sometime either this week or next (if you didn't sign up for a time on Monday, be sure to do so today). We'll be talking about Rich's Diving into the Wreck; re-read "Incipience," "The Stranger," "Diving into the Wreck," "The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven Understood At Last As a Sexual Message," "Rape," and "From a Survivor." Think about the structure of the book: short poems followed by a longer meditation on a woman who has taken a journey through madness, followed by more short poems, followed by a longer meditation on a "wild child" raised away from human culture. How does this structure work? What do the long poems of meditation do to the short poems that precede them?

For Monday, November 29: Over break, work on your third essay, on Hughes or Williams; details here. And no time like break to work on your second second memorization, which you might find among the poems by Rich and Komunyakaa that you'll also be reading over break. Take your Rich book with you and work through "Trying to Talk with a Man" carefully, starting with the shocking opening line about "testing bombs" (think of Dickinson and the "bomb" she often imagined herself holding). As you read in Komunyakaa's Neon Vernacular, pay particular attention to his poems about the Vietnam War, Dien Cai Dau (Vietnamese for "crazy in the head") on pp. 137-159. Read around in Neon Vernacular as much as you can, and be sure to read the following sections of the book: "New Poems," "Lost in the Bonewheel Factory," "I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head." Have a good break.

For Friday, November 19: Bring both your Hughes book and Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck to class. We'll finish up Hughes and begin on Rich. Look once more at Hughes's "Freedom's Plow." The poem keeps echoing a song that has its origins in slave times as a kind of slave working song, known as "Keep Your Hands on the Plow": "Got my hands on the gospel plow, / Wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now. / Keep you hands on the plow, hold on. / Hold on, hold on, / Keep your hands on that plow, hold on." The song evolved over the decades, and by the early twentieth century, it was sung in various forms to support all kinds of workers' rights protests. While Hughes was working on Selected Poems, a South Carolina woman, Alice Wine, added some lyrics to the old song, thinking they would serve the just-emerging civil rights movement: "I know one thing we did right /Was the day we sstarted to fight. / Keep your eyes on the prize / Hold on, hold on." Here's one powerful version of the song, sung by Mavis Staples, complete with a montage of images from the 1960s civil rights marches and protests. The song continued to grow and morph and be sung across the South and evetually throughout the country during the civil rights movement. Here's John Mellencamp singing the song at the White House last year, with President Obama in the audience. And here are the Freedom Singers in Chicago performing it much as it was sung for a century at rallies, protests, all the way back to the slave cottonfields. Bruce Springsteen, anyone? (It's actually one of my favorite performances of the song.)

Carefully re-read Rich's opening poem, "Trying to Talk with a Man." Work on your third essay, on Hughes or Williams; details here. And, of course, there's the second memorization, which it's best not to put off much longer . . . .

For Wednesday, November 17: Read through "Theme for English B" a few more times and write a paragraph about some aspect of the poem that you found illuminating or confusing or both (I'll collect the paragraphs in class). Read all the way through "Montage of a Dream Deferred" again (219-272), listening for the ways that lines and images from earlier poems get reprised in later poems and given different beats. Notice how the "Dream Boogie" keeps getting repeated throughout the section, right up to the amazing final refrain. For a sample of Boogie Woogie music, check out this video. Then read the amazing final poem of the book, "Freedom's Plow," and think about whose words get quoted throughout that poem. Think about the little poem that just precedes "Freedom's Plow," "Refugee in America" (p. 290), and consider how that poem works as a counterpoint to the final poem. Your third essay, on either a poem by Williams or a poem by Hughes, will be due on Friday, December 3. The assignment can be found here.

For Monday, November 15: Group leaders from Friday will take over the pen and the overhead projector and guide us through what their groups discovered about Hughes's "Weary Blues" and the other poems. We'll discuss them together. Finish reading Rich's Diving Into the Wreck, and keep working on your second memorization (and recalling your first one as well).

For Friday, November 12: We will break into small groups to discuss in detail some Hughes poems. Look closely at Hughes's poem, "The Weary Blues" (pp. 33-34), written after Hughes visited a cabaret in Little Harlem in 1923, and recalling the first blues he had heard as a child in Kansas. Read the poem carefully and think about the following; make notes so you're ready to discuss this poem with your group:

--What is a "syncopated tune" and why is it important in this poem?

--Who is doing the speaking in this poem? Do you picture the narrator as a white man listening to a black man sing, or another African American listening? What difference (if any) does it make? What do you know about the narrator? How does his experience of the blues affect him?

--There is a repeated address to the blues themselves: "O Blues!" "Sweet Blues!" "O Blues!" What do you make of that middle invocation--"Sweet Blues!"?

--What effect does the singing of the blues have on the singer? How is that effect different than the effect the singing has on the listener?

--As always in Hughes, there is a complex and sometimes deceiving sound pattern in this poem. Track the rhymes and discuss the way the rhymes (and off-rhymes) work to develop the mood of the poem.

--Contrast the mood of this poem (as it responds to the blues) to the tone of "Dream Boogie" (p. 221), as it responds to a very different kind of music, boogie-woogie.

Carefully read once more through Hughes's "Montage of a Dream Deferred," which is a sequence of poems that functions as one long poem (pp. 219-272). Focus particularly on the opening poem, "Dream Boogie," and on "Theme for English B" (pp. 247-248). Think about whether there's a pun in the name of the course ("English B"), and think about the significance of the route the narrator takes home from class, and the nature of the writing assignment he is given, and the nature of his response to the instructor. Meanwhile, you should be reading Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck; we will be discussing the book as a whole.

Here are the discussion groups:

Group One: Kristin Anderson (DL), John Boylan, Aly Brown, Pete Campie, Lexie Hoffman, Katherine Ryan
Group Two: Pat Hauswald (DL), Rhianna Kelling, Kyung Hee Ko, Marissa Leissler, Ben McFarlane, Lilly McGee
Group Three: Katie Klein (DL), Seo Jung Koo, Ben Meiners, Laura Nierman, Stefan Schoeberlein, Kaylee Williams
Group Four: Rachel Stevenson (DL), Chyla Bowles, Taylor Pedersen, Ben Prostine (DL), Leah Thiessen, Katelyn Wolff

For Thursday, November 12: Carefully read once more through Hughes's "Montage of a Dream Deferred," which is a sequence of poems that functions as one long poem (pp. 219-272). Focus particularly on the opening poem, "Dream Boogie," and on "Theme for English B" (pp. 247-248). Think about whether there's a pun in the name of the course ("English B"), and might think about the significance of the route the narrator takes home from class, and the nature of the writing assignment he is given, and the nature of his response to the instructor. Carefully read "I, Too" (p. 275) and "Old Walt" (p. 100): both of these poems respond in some ways to Whitman. How do they respond to Whitman? What does Hughes like about Whitman?

For Wednesday, November 10: We'll finish talking about "Afro-American Fragment" and move on to the other poems listed in Monday's assignment. Read through the Whitman poem, "So Long!," that I gave you in class today (the 1881 version of the poem is printed below in Monday's assignment. Keep reading through the Hughes book; the more poems of his you read, the more you'll begin to feel the music and the various beats that Hughes is experimenting with, playing on, and transporting from music into poetry. The next book we'll read is Adrienne Rich's Diving into the Wreck: you can start that any time. Don't forget the second memorizations; you can do the memorization any time now up until the final week of classes.

For Monday, November 8: Bring your Hughes book to class. Look carefully at Langston Hughes's "Afro-American Fragment" (p. 3). Use what you've learned from Emily Dickinson's and William Carlos Willliams's rhyming techniques to discover what rhyme is in this poem and how it functions. Focus on the title (what is the "fragment"? why is "Afro-American" hyphenated and what does that hyphenation suggest?). Focus on what the "memories alive" are in this poem (how are they kept alive? whose memories are they?). Read Whitman's poem called "So Long!," available below, a poem that Hughes is responding to in "Afro-American Fragment" (and throughout his Selected Poems). Look up the word "atavistic" (what does it mean and how does it become suggestive in this poem?). Also think about "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (p. 4) and "Aunt Sue's Stories" (p. 6) and "Danse Africaine" (p. 7). Then think your way through the amazing poems, "The Weary Blues" (33-34) and "Theme for English B" (pp. 247-248).

Walt Whitman
"So Long!"

To conclude, I announce what comes after me.
I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all,
I would raise my voice jocund and strong with reference to consummations.

When America does what was promis'd,
When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons, (5)
When the rest part away for superb persons and contribute to them,
When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,
Then to me and mine our due fruition.

I have press'd through in my own right,
I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and the songs of life and death, (10)
And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births.

I have offer'd my style to every one,
I have journey'd with confident step;
While my pleasure is yet at the full I whisper So long!
And take the young woman's hand and the young man's hand for the last time.

I announce natural persons to arise, (15)
I announce justice triumphant,
I announce uncompromising liberty and equality,
I announce the justification of candor and the justification of pride.

I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only,
I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble, (20)
I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant.

I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen'd,
I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.

I announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one, (So long!)
I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm'd. (25)

I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold,
I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation.

I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded,
I announce a race of splendid and savage old men.

O thicker and faster--(So long!) (30)
O crowding too close upon me,
I foresee too much, it means more than I thought,
It appears to me I am dying.

Hasten throat and sound your last,
Salute me--salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more. (35)
Screaming electric, the atmosphere using,
At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing,
Swiftly on, but a little while alighting,
Curious envelop'd messages delivering,
Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping, (40)
Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring,
To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving,
To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set promulging,
To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection me more clearly explaining,
To young men my problems offering--no dallier I--I the muscle of their brains trying, (45)
So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary,
Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making me really undying,)
The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I have been incessantly preparing.

What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended with unshut mouth?
Is there a single final farewell? (50)

My songs cease, I abandon them,
From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely to you.

Camerado, this is no book,
Who touches this touches a man, (Is it night? are we here together alone?) (55)
It is I you hold and who holds you, I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth.

O how your fingers drowse me,
Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans of my ears,
I feel immerged from head to foot, (60)
Delicious, enough.

Enough O deed impromptu and secret,
Enough O gliding present--enough O summ'd-up past.

Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,
I give it especially to you, do not forget me, (65)
I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile,
I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me,
An unknown sphere more real than I dream'd, more direct, darts awakening rays about me, So long!
Remember my words, I may again return,
I love you, I depart from materials, (70)
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

For Friday, November 5: Bring both the Williams and Hughes books with you. We'll try to look at a "Pictures from Brueghel" poem; look here for many of the paintings that Williams' poems trace; pay particular attention to "The Peasant Wedding," reading the poem carefully next to the painting (click on the thumbnail-size images of the paintings to get a full-screen image). Brueghel's actual self-portrait is here (along with some general information on Brueghel), but look here to see the painting that at the time was considered to be Brueghel's self portrait (it's actually a painting by Jean Fouquet). Which version do you think Williams was describing in "Self-Portrait"? Look carefully at Langston Hughes's "Afro-American Fragment" (p. 3). Use what you've learned from Emily Dickinson's and William Carlos Willliams's rhyming techniques to discover what rhyme is in this poem and how it functions. Focus on the title (what is the "fragment"? why is "Afro-American" hyphenated and what does that hyphenation suggest?). Focus on what the "memories alive" are in this poem (how are they kept alive? whose memories are they?). Look up the word "atavistic" (what does it mean and how does it become suggestive in this poem?). Also think about "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (p. 4) and "Aunt Sue's Stories" (p. 6) and "Danse Africaine" (p. 7). Then think your way through the amazing poems, "The Weary Blues" (33-34) and "Theme for English B" (pp. 247-248). You should by now be well along on your second memorization, which needs to be done before the end of classes (December 10). Remember that this memorization needs to be by a different poet from the one you memorized last time around. And remember, too, that this time I will ask you to recite both poems that you have memorized.

For Wednesday, November 3: We still need to look at a couple of Williams' "Pictures from Brueghel" poems, but we'll start with the poem you wrote about for Monday, "To a Poor Old Woman" (p. 97). Think about that poem in relation to "Proletarian Portrait": what kind of social commentary (if any) is Williams making here? How effective is that commentary? Look again at "The Poor" (p. 129), which begins "It's the anarchy of poverty / delights me": it's another poem for which the title seems to imply a large social problem, but where the solution to the problem is not a social one, but a much more specific personal one. Be sure to have finished the Hughes reading by now; we'll begin with Hughes on Friday.

For Monday, November 1: We will discuss a few more Williams poems, including his "Pictures from Brueghel" poems. Look here for many of the paintings that Williams' poems trace; pay particular attention to "The Peasant Wedding," reading the poem carefully next to the painting (click on the thumbnail-size images of the paintings to get a full-screen image). Look again at this image of Charles Demuth's "Portrait of WCW" ("I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold") and compare it to Williams's poem, "The Great Figure." As you look carefully at the poem, try to track how Williams dissects the moment of perception, how he breaks down what is a split-second perception of sight and sound into a process of apprehension and comprehension. Read carefully "To a Poor Old Woman" on p. 97; write a paragraph on some aspect of that poem. Keep in mind what we've been talking about with Williams's experimentation with "imaginative suspense" and with the linguistic energy that can be created by unorthodox line breaks and other poetic innovations. Focus on one of those innovations in this poem. We'll start discussing Hughes on Wednesday.

For Friday, October 29: Your essays are due today; details available here. Look at this image of Charles Demuth's "Portrait of WCW" ("I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold") and compare it to Williams's poem, "The Great Figure." Read the commentary about Demuth's painting and about the relationship between Williams and Demuth. As you look carefully at the poem, try to track how Williams dissects the moment of perception, how he breaks down what is a split-second perception of sight and sound into a process of apprehension and comprehension. Continue reading the Langston Hughes poems in his Selected Poems: the "Afro-American Fragments" section; the "Shadow of the Blues" section (with particular attention to "The Weary Blues"), the "Distance Nowhere" section (think especially about Hughes's poem to Whitman, called "Old Walt"), the "Magnolia Flowers" section (with poems about African-American life in the American South), the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" section (which is really one long poem), and "Words Like Freedom" (with Hughes's direct response to Whitman, called "I, Too").

For Wednesday, October 27: We'll finish discussing "The Lonely Street" and move on to "The Great Figure," "Death the Barber," "The Locust Tree in Flower" (both versions),"To a Poor Old Woman," "Proletarian Portrait," "The Poor." Read those over carefully; make notes; what can you say about these poems? Be working on your final draft of the essay on Whitman and Dickinson, due Friday, October 29; details available here. Don't forget you have a second memorization that you will need to recite by the last week of classes, so get started now. Choose at least 20 lines (one complete poem, or two shorter ones, or part of a longer poem that forms a full unit) from Williams, Hughes, Rich, or Komunyakaa. If you want to get started on the poems in Langston Hughes's Selected Poems, read the "Afro-American Fragments" section; the "Shadow of the Blues" section (with particular attention to "The Weary Blues"), the "Distance Nowhere" section (think especially about Hughes's poem to Whitman, called "Old Walt"), the "Magnolia Flowers" section (with poems about African-American life in the American South), the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" section (which is really one long poem), and "Words Like Freedom" (with Hughes's direct response to Whitman, called "I, Too").

For Monday, October 25: We'll start with "The Red Wheelbarrow" poem and talk our way through several WCW poems, trying to figure out how to read, in a productive way, poems that on some level seem to resist analysis: "Tract," "The Lonely Street," "The Great Figure," "Death the Barber," "The Locust Tree in Flower" (both versions), "To a Poor Old Woman," "Proletarian Portrait," "The Poor." Read those over carefully; make notes; what can you say about these poems? You're working on your second essay assignment, on Whitman and Dickinson, due Friday, October 29; details available here. Don't forget you have a second memorization that you will need to recite by the last week of classes, so get started now. Choose at least 20 lines (one complete poem, or two shorter ones, or part of a longer poem that forms a full unit) from Williams, Hughes, Rich, or Komunyakaa. If you want to get started on the poems in Langston Hughes's Selected Poems, read the "Afro-American Fragments" section; the "Shadow of the Blues" section (with particular attention to "The Weary Blues"), the "Distance Nowhere" section (think especially about Hughes's poem to Whitman, called "Old Walt"), the "Magnolia Flowers" section (with poems about African-American life in the American South), the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" section (which is really one long poem), and "Words Like Freedom" (with Hughes's direct response to Whitman, called "I, Too").

For Friday, October 22: Read over, carefully, the Williams poems from The Wanderer , from Al Que Quiere!, from Sour Grapes, from Spring and All, from Collected Poems 1921-1931: keep in mind the things we talked about in class on Wednesday about the effect of hanging hungry words (like prepositions, definite and indefinite articles, and conjunctions) at the ends of lines, creating what Williams calls "imaginative suspense." We will watch the Williams film today, which has some very interesting scenes, including a lot of recordings of Williams' voice as he reads poems and discusses his poetics; this is a particularly good video that introduces you to what Williams is up to in his poetry; it will make your encounters with Williams's poetry much easier and more enjoyable.. You're working on your second essay assignment, on Whitman and Dickinson, due Friday, October 29; details available here. Don't forget you have a second memorization that you will need to recite by the last week of classes, so get started now. Choose at least 20 lines (one complete poem, or two shorter ones, or part of a longer poem that forms a full unit) from Williams, Hughes, Rich, or Komunyakaa. If you want to get started on the poems in Langston Hughes's Selected Poems, read the "Afro-American Fragments" section; the "Shadow of the Blues" section (with particular attention to "The Weary Blues"), the "Distance Nowhere" section (think especially about Hughes's poem to Whitman, called "Old Walt"), the "Magnolia Flowers" section (with poems about African-American life in the American South), the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" section (which is really one long poem), and "Words Like Freedom" (with Hughes's direct response to Whitman, called "I, Too").

For Wednesday, October 20: You should by now have read the following poems in the Williams book: all poems from The Wanderer , from Al Que Quiere!, from Sour Grapes, from Spring and All, from Collected Poems 1921-1931, from An Early Martyr, from The Complete Collected Poems 1906-1938, from The Broken Span, and from Pictures from Brueghel. Also, read the selection from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (pp. 226-33). It's important to be here for the opening class about how to go about reading Williams's poetry, which can be a real mystery until you get into the spirit of what he's doing. You've now read through a large body of his work. For today, focus on "Dedication for a Plot of Ground," a kind of elegy for his grandmother, whose name was (really!) Emily Dickinson Wellcome. The poem is a biography in 232 words: just think about what is packed into that brief poem, how much you come to know about this woman. Think about the syntax; just how do the sentences in the poem work? What is a "plot of ground"? How many ways can you hear that phrase? Also read "Tract" (p. 18) very carefully. Is this poem a poem about how to conduct a funeral or how to write a poem (or both)? And just what is Williams warning us about? Then think about "The Lonely Street," a kind of half-formed sonnet, about some half-grown-up girls (p. 35). Your second essay assignment, on Whitman and Dickinson, is due Friday, October 29, and is available here.

For Monday, October 18: Finish the reading assignment in William Carlos Williams Selected Poems volume: all poems from The Wanderer , from Al Que Quiere!, from Sour Grapes, from Spring and All, from Collected Poems 1921-1931, from An Early Martyr, from The Complete Collected Poems 1906-1938, from The Broken Span, and from Pictures from Brueghel. Also, read the selection from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (pp. 226-233). Your second essay, on Whitman and Dickinson, will be due Friday, October 29 in class; you can find the assignment here. Bring your Dickinson book to class, and look over carefully the "I'm 'wife'" poem we bagan talking about on Friday (poem #199): we'll finish discussing it, along with the following poems (which you should read again and take notes on): #1261 ("A Word dropped careless on a Page") and #249 ("Wild Nights").

For Friday, October 15: Read really carefully the two late summer/Indian summer poems we talked about Wednesday--poems #130 (These are the days when Birds come back") and 1068 ("Further in Summer than the Birds")--and try to work out the intensive interplay between nature and religion that Dickinson is probing here. Look up key words. Keep working on the Williams reading assignment: read the following poems in the William Carlos Williams Selected Poems volume: all poems from The Wanderer , from Al Que Quiere!, from Sour Grapes, from Spring and All, from Collected Poems 1921-1931, from An Early Martyr, from The Complete Collected Poems 1906-1938, from The Broken Span, and from Pictures from Brueghel. Also, read the selection from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (pp. 226-233). Your second essay, on Whitman and Dickinson, will be due Friday, October 29 in class; you can find the assignment here.

For Wednesday, October 13: We will continue to talk about how to go about reading a Dickinson poem. Your first memorizations must be done before the end of this week; please see me if you have not yet signed up for a time to recite your memorized poem(s). And begin reading the following poems in the William Carlos Williams Selected Poems volume: all poems from The Wanderer , from Al Que Quiere!, from Sour Grapes, from Spring and All, from Collected Poems 1921-1931, from An Early Martyr, from The Complete Collected Poems 1906-1938, from The Broken Span, and from Pictures from Brueghel. Also, read the selection from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" (pp. 226-233).

For Monday, October 11: Today, you will see a film biography of Emily Dickinson. Among the commentators will be Adrienne Rich (whose poetry we'll be reading toward the end of the semester), Anthony Hecht (former poet laureate of the U.S.), Joyce Carol Oates (novelist), as well as critics and biographers. You will get a good sense of Amherst in the mid-nineteenth century and an especially good portrayal of Emily Dickinson's education. Pay particular attention to the comments on her meter. And try to get a good sense of what her family life was like. I will be in New York (at Whitman's birthplace on Long Island), so my graduate assistant Sarah Walker will be here to take attendance and show you the film. We will continue discussing Dickinson's poetry on Wednesday.

For Friday, October 8: We will continue talking about Dickinson's poems on death and the ways those poems reveal her concerns about etermity, immortality, God, and the significance of life. Look over #465 ("I heard a Fly buzz") again and think of it in relation to the poem we discussed Wednesday ("Because I could not stop for Death"). Read #465 carefully, and write a paragraph about how Dickinson's view of death in that poem relates to Whitman's views of death in "Song of Myself" (choose one section of Whitman's poem that you think best relates to or contrasts Dickinson's poem, and explain how the two relate to each other). I'll collect these paragraphs in class. We will discuss Dickinson's poems #216 ("Safe in their Alabaster Chambers," both versions).

For Wednesday, October 6: We are going to begin our study of Dickinson by focusing on her poems about death and the hope of an afterlife: #465 ("I heard a Fly buzz"), #216 ("Safe in their Alabaster Chambers," both versions), #408 ("Unit, like Death, for Whom?"), #712 ("Because I could not stop for Death"), #724 ("It's easy to invent a Life"), #1039 ("I heard, as if I had no Ear"), #1445 ("Death is the supple Suitor"). You know what to do: look up key words (like Diadems, Doges, Unit, Bohea), make notes, try to work out readings. Think of how the character of "God" differs for Dickinson from the "God" that appears in Whitman and the "God" that appears in Bradstreet. How is Dickinson's "Eternity" different from Bradstreet's and Whitman's? Immortality?

Keep working on reading through the list of Dickinson poems I gave you to read:

Work in detail through the following: 130, 185, 193, 199, 209, 213, 216 (both versions), 252, 269, 278, 280, 301, 303, 305, 313, 348, 398, 443, 465, 512, 632, 650, 670, 680, 712, 754, 872, 997, 1068, 1261, 1624.

Read carefully: 18, 49, 67, 115, 125, 128, 131, 160, 165, 167, 178, 182, 187, 211, 214, 241, 249, 258, 281, 285, 287, 288, 290, 298, 311, 315, 318, 322, 324, 326, 328, 332, 335, 338, 341, 365, 376, 378, 384, 386, 396, 401, 403, 407, 413, 414, 435, 437, 441, 448, 449, 474, 478, 501, 511, 520, 526, 528, 536, 544, 547, 549, 553, 566, 569, 585, 599, 624, 640, 657, 664, 675, 709, 721, 724, 742, 744, 761, 764, 813, 822, 829, 836, 856, 860, 861, 875, 883, 910, 913, 949, 976, 985, 986, 1026, 1046, 1052, 1055, 1056, 1072, 1075, 1078, 1082, 1129, 1136, 1176, 1207, 1212, 1243, 1255, 1276, 1304, 1333, 1354, 1393, 1400, 1433, 1452, 1463, 1474, 1501, 1509, 1519, 1540, 1545, 1551, 1587, 1593, 1651, 1670, 1672, 1695, 1716, 1732, 1755.

For Monday, October 4: We will finish up our discussion of Whitman by having discussion leaders from the four small groups report on the most interesting aspects of the group discussion Friday. We'll also look at the following Whitman poem, called "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," a poem he wrote during the Civil War. Think of it in relation to the ways Whitman uses science in "Song of Myself."

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

For Friday, October 1: Continue reading the Dickinson poems, as indicated below. Also, read the introduction to the Dickinson book, and read this short biographical sketch online. For Monday, bring both your Whitman and Dickinson books to class. I will be in North Carolilna at a meeting on Friday, but my graduate assistant Eric Conrad will be here to take attendance and to move from group to group to answer questions and to listen to the discussion. Eric is a veteran of the graduate Whitman seminar, has published on Whitman, and is involved with both the online Whitman Archive and the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.

Here are the groups:

Group One: Kristin Anderson, John Boylan, Aly Brown, Pete Campie, Lexie Hoffman, Katherine Ryan (DL)
Group Two: Pat Hauswald, Rhianna Kelling, Kyung Hee Ko, Marissa Leissler, Ben McFarlane, Lilly McGee (DL)
Group Three: Katie Klein, Seo Jung Koo, Ben Meiners, Laura Nierman, Stefan Schoeberlein (DL), Kaylee Williams
Group Four: Chyla Bowles, Taylor Pedersen, Ben Prostine (DL), Rachel Stevenson, Leah Thiessen, Katelyn Wolff

If a "DL" appears after you name, you will be the discussion leader for your group and should be ready to guide your group through the discussion, keeping the group on task and moving through the poetry. Over the course of the semester, you'll each have a chance to be a DL. Each group is responsible for reading through, thinking about, and discussing in detail three sections of "Song of Myself." Group 1: Sections 15, 20, 39; Group 2: Sections 16, 23, 49; Group 3: Sections 19, 27-28, 50; Group 4: Sections 31, 44, 52. Read through the sections your group will be discussing and make notes in your book--questions about the section, definitions of key words, ideas about how the section relates to other sections of "Song of Myself," and so on. Come prepared to really talk about the three sections your group will be focusing on.

Also read carefully again "The Sleepers" (pp. 105-115). Look at the website on the poem that I've prepared, available here. Read through the materials on the site, and then in your small groups, after talking about "Song of Myself," discuss the following topics:

1. How is sleep, in Whitman's mind, a democratic state? What happens in sleep that loosens the boundaries of the self?

2. Have someone read aloud Sections 5 and 6 of "The Sleepers," pp. 110-111.

3. Discuss how the three scenes interrelate: the first scene is of General George Washington with his troops after a defeat by the British in the Revolutionary War (1776) and then after final victory over the British; the second scene is a memory of Whitman's mother and an Indian woman; the third is of a slave (Lucifer). Think about how the narrator positions himself in relation to all these characters. What does he find most fascinating about each one? Remember that this is all in a poem about a dream sequence, sleepers. How are these scenes suggestive of dreaming? What do they suggest about Whitman's ideas of democracy? Of crossing boundaries or barriers?

4. What is the effect of suddenly having Lucifer the slave take over the narration of the poem? Why doesn't Whitman stay "outside" of this character, as he does with the others?

5. Now read aloud the end of Section 7 and Section 8 to the bottom of p. 114. How do the concerns of Sections 5 and 6 reoccur here? What is Whitman saying about slavery? What does this final vision of "every thing in its place" suggest?

6. Look back at "Song of Myself," p. 62, where Whitman suddenly claims to be the slave: "I am the hounded slave . . . " How is that section similar to and different from the Lucifer section of "Sleepers"?

7. Read through the final catalog of sleepers on p. 114 (section 8). Why does the slave reappear here? What has changed?

For Wednesday, September 29: Continue reading the Dickinson poems, as indicated below. We'll finish talking as a large group about "Song of Myself." On Friday, we will divide into small groups to discuss particular sections of "Song of Myself." This is a great opportunity for you to begin to articulate both questions and ideas that have occurred to you as you have read the poem. You will be trying, as a group, to arrive at a satisfying sense of what each section accomplishes and how that section relates to the rest of the poem. I will be in North Carolilna at a meeting on Friday, but my graduate assistant Eric Conrad will be here to take attendance and to move from group to group to answer questions and to listen to the discussion. Eric is a veteran of the graduate Whitman seminar, has published on Whitman, and is involved with both the online Whitman Archive and the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.

Here are the groups:

1. How is sleep, in Whitman's mind, a democratic state? What happens in sleep that loosens the boundaries of the self?

2. Have someone read aloud Sections 5 and 6 of "The Sleepers," pp. 110-111.

4. What is the effect of suddenly having Lucifer the slave take over the narration of the poem? Why doesn't Whitman stay "outside" of this character, as he does with the others?

7. Read through the final catalog of sleepers on p. 114 (section 8). Why does the slave reappear here? What has changed?

For Monday, September 27: Continue reading the Dickinson poems, as indicated in the preceding assignment. I've been talking at you about Whitman for the past couple of days; today I want you to talk back to me. I'll call on a few people randomly to read the section they've chosen as particularly baffling or challenging and to start us on a discussion of that section. Be prepared.

For Friday, September 25: We will talk about "Song of Myself." Come prepared to raise specific questions about any one section of the poem. Think particularly about what we were talking about in class on Wednesday about "discrimination" and "nondiscrimination." Where are the most indiscriminate parts of the poem? What do they have to do with a democratic way of being? Think, too, of how God and Death and Sin and Punishment and Eternity and Love of This World--all of Bradstreet's concerns--play out in Whitman's poem.

The next poet we will be reading will be Emily Dickinson. I will give you the poems to read now, so that you can get a head start if you have time. The more you read of Dickinson's poetry, the better. Be sure to read the following poems carefully, several times each. You should aim to have this reading done by the end of next week. Please note: there are two numbers above each of the Dickinson poems in your book. The numbers that I list here refer to the number of the poem that appears in parentheses above the poem in Final Harvest.

Think of the following poems especially in relation to Bradstreet's poems: 216 (both versions), 280, 313, 338, 465, 712.

For Wednesday, September 23: We will talk a bit about the Whitman film we saw in class on Monday, in relation to "Song of Myself." Identify a section of "Song" that you find particularly challenging or difficult to understand. What makes it hard to understand (the diction?, the juxtapositions of images?, the vagueness of the language?, the purpose?). Read again carefully "I Sing the Body Electric" and "The Sleepers." How does Whitman identify sleep itself as a democratic condition? In "Body Electric," why does the Whitman persona take on the role of slave auctioneer? If you missed the Whitman film, if you want to review scenes from the part we watched, or if you want to watch the rest of the film, it is available here. Meanwhile, be sure you've read the online biography of Whitman through the section on the first edition of Leaves of Grass. There will be a brief true-false quiz on your reading of the biographical material, the film, and the poetry today. Meanwhile, don't forget the first poetry memorization, which you will need to recite to me by October 15. The earlier you begin the memorization, the easier it will be: five minutes a day between now and Oct. 15 will work for most people. You need to memorize 20 lines of either Bradstreet, Whitman, or Dickinson for the first memorization. You can choose two or three short poems by Dickinson, say, that add up to at least 20 lines, or you can choose one poem of 20 or more lines--but you need to end your memorized passage at an actual stop in the poetry (so if it's a 22-line poem, you need to memorize the final two lines). Or you can choose a section of a longer poem, as long as you end at an appropriate stopping point. So, for example, you could memorize "Song of Myself" from the passage on p. 33 beginning "The Yankee clipper" and ending with the last line in Section 10 ("I had him sit next to me at table . . . . my firelock leaned in the corner"). One final caution: if you are memorizing Whitman, remember that a "line" is defined as all the words from the opening capitalized word to the end-punctuation of that line (no matter how that line may be broken up on the printed page). So, for example, on p. 47, the line "What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a wonder" is ONE line, even though it takes up two lines on the printed page. Begin your memorization by reading the poem you choose out loud many times; it's easier to memorize if you can hear yourself saying it. Record it on your computer or cell phone and play it back so you hear your voice saying it (this really does help).

For Monday, September 20: Your essay on Bradstreet is due in class; details available here. You should by now have carefully read all of Whitman's 1855 Leaves of Grass, including his preface to the poems (pp. 5-24). We will discuss the preface and start our discussion of "Song of Myself." "God" appears a number of times in "Song of Myself." How is Whitman's "God" different from the "God" Bradstreet interacts with? Where is Whitman's God located? What does Whitman's God do?

For Friday, September 17: Bring both your Bradstreet and your Whitman books to class. We'll finish discussing "Contemplations" and move on to Whitman's "Song of Myself," which you should have read through a couple of times. Read again Bradstreet's "The Flesh and the Spirit" (pp. 231-234), where she gives us a dialogue between the body and the soul. Examine how she sets up such a dialogue, and notice who wins. Then think of "Song of Myself" as a different kind of dialogue between the body and the soul, one that takes place nearly 200 years later. Think particularly of Section 5 of "Song of Myself": how does Whitman's portrayal of the relationship between soul and body differ from Bradstreet's? You should also be reading the online biography of Whitman up to the section called "The 1856 Leaves." And, of course, you're working on your Bradstreet essays, due on Monday (Sept. 20); details available here.

For Wednesday, September 15: Continue working on your essays, due this coming Monday (Sept. 20); details available here. As we discussed in class today, it's important for you to begin today writing out some thoughts about the poem you have chosen. Think about the poem by writing about it. Never turn in your first draft of an essay. Give your essay time to develop from random thoughts and unconnected insights into a coherent whole, where some of your written insights will drop away while others will get developed. Writing about poetry is difficult and does not lend itself well to last-minute composition. Continue reading Whitman's "Song of Myself" (try to finish your first reading) and the online biography of Whitman. For today (Wednesday), write a paragraph (to be turned in) on any one stanza of "Contemplations," in which you talk about how the 4/3 (abab/ccc) form of that particular stanza works to separate contrasting thoughts OR where the stanza works to bring together the things of this world (the world of fours) with the things of the world beyond this one (the world of the trinity). Your paragraph should give a sense of what the stanza is contemplating, but do so in a way that indicates how the very form in which Bradstreet contemplates guides the thought itself.

For Monday, September 13: Your first essays are due a week from today--Monday, September 20; details are available here. For today (Monday), we will finish up the "Burning House" poem and then discuss Bradstreet's "Contemplations." This is a complex poem in which Bradstreet is trying to work out the tensions we have seen operating in many of her poems--tensions between her orthodox, dominant "I" and her wandering, rebellious "heart." The "I" is drawn to thoughts of the world beyond this one, to the spiritual realm that the Puritans believed was the only one we should desire. Her "heart" is drawn to this world and to the things in this world that she loves and continually has taken from her. In "Contemplations," she expresses the tension between her infatuation with the beautiful natural, physical world and her awareneness that the spiritual world by definition has to be better than the physical world. But her "feeling knowledge" keeps telling her something different than her orthodox religious knowledge tells her. Re-read the entire poem. Choose two sections and work out how they relate to the overall structure and pattern of the poem. Look up words; say the stanzas aloud, looking for telling breaks in the meter; search for the breaks, reversals, and (as Rich calls them) the "stressmarks of anger." Meanwhile, begin reading Walt Whitman's 1855 version of Leaves of Grass. Make sure this is the edition you are reading (if you bought the copy of the book that is available for our course at Prairie Lights Bookstore, you have the right edition). There are twelve poems in this edition, starting with the long poem called "Song of Myself." Begin reading "Song of Myself," and for today read at least the first 12 sections. You should have the entire book read by next week. Also take a look at the online Walt Whitman Archive and begin reading the biography of Whitman available there; I wrote this biography with Kenneth Price, and it will give you a good overview of Whitman's life. You are not responsible for the introduction by Malcolm Cowley in the edition of Leaves that we are using (though you're of course welcome to read it).

For Friday, September 10: Continue thinking your way through the "Burning House" poem. We'll finish discussion of this poem today. And re-read the long poem "Contemplations," which probably seemed a bit boring and incomprehensible the first time you read through it. Think of it now in relationship to the various "tensions" we've been discovering in Bradstreet's poetry. Your first essay, on Bradstreet, will be due a week from Monday (Monday, September 20), so you should begin working on it now. Details of the essay assignment are available here.

Think through the following questions and jot down notes about how you would answer each one. We've talked about some of these issues, but try to discover additional insights we haven't yet found. Focus especially on the final four questions about the end of the poem.

What does Bradstreet mean in the sixth line of the poem ("Let no man know is my desire")? What is it that she doesn't want any man to know?

Why does Bradstreet divide herself into parts in this poem? In other words, sometimes she refers to herself as "I," but other times only as a body-part ("My sorrowing eyes," "My heart")--what is the effect of this self-division?

When Bradstreet says goodbye to all her earthly things, why does she use the French word "adieu"? What's the effect of that usage?

Which lines in the poem seem most like they came from the New England Primer? Why?

Why does Bradstreet turn at the end of the poem to an image of God as "mighty Architect"?

Why the sudden use at the end of the poem of economic images (purchased, paid for, richly furnished, wealth enough, treasure)?

What is "Pelf" and what is "Store" and what are the implications of Bradstreet's use of these terms?

How do you read the next-to-last line of the poem ("The world no longer let me love")? How many ways can you hear that line, and what do the various readings of the line suggest?

Words to be sure to look up: store, adieu, 'gin (as in "Then straight I 'gin my heart to chide"), architect, pelf.

For Wednesday, September 8: Our focus in class today will be Bradstreet's poem on the burning of her house (pp. 318-320). As you re-read and REALLY READ and think through the poem, it will help if you imagine spaces after every six lines. The poem is written in couplets, but it was originally composed in stanzas of six lines each (three couplets per stanza). The flow of thought (and the breaks of thought) will be clearer if you picture the poem in stanzas (draw a line after every six lines). Write a paragraph (to be handed in) about one of the stanzas: focus on what is going on in that particular stanza, what part of Anne's self seems to be talking at that moment, how the diction of that particular stanza is different from the others. Also be sure you have read through Bradstreet's prose (mixed in with the poetry on pp. 262-317). Mark places in the prose that seem to you to particularly illuminate the tensions you find in the poetry.

For Friday, September 3: Do the same kind of intensive reading of Bradstreet's third poem on the death of a grandchild ("On My Dear Grandchild Simon Bradstreet," p. 259) that you did on the poem about Elizabeth. You don't need to write out a paragraph, but do take notes, and sometimes it helps to write the paragraph just so that you force yourself to begin to articulate your ideas about the poem. If you missed doing the informal assignment for Wednesday, do write a paragraph for today on the "Simon Bradstreet" poem; you can turn that in as a replacement for the paragraph you didn't do for Wednesday. Also do a REAL reading of Bradstreet's "Burning of Our House" poem (pp. 318-320). Apply some of the insights that were flowing in class discussion on Wednesday to this poem; look up words; ask yourself why Bradstreet makes surprising moves (like why she suddenly says "goodbye" in French!).

For Wednesday, September 1: Read, and I mean really READ, the three Bradstreet poems on the death of her grandchildren (pp. 257-259). Bring your Bradstreet book to class. Write a paragraph (to be turned in) about one aspect of the first poem ("In Memory of My First Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet"). Look up words in the Oxford English Dictionary, even (and especially) ones you think you know. Think about the repetitions, the rhymes, the meter (and the breaks in meter). Can you find any of what Adrienne Rich, in her Foreword to the book, calls the "stress-marks of anger, the strains of self-division" in Bradstreet's poem? In your paragraph, focus on just one aspect of the poem that you found illuminating, something in the poem that began to open up for you its larger meanings. It might be a particular image, or the way she uses syntax, or the repetition of a word, or the way she contracts a word, or the way she argues about how nature works. There will also be a brief true-false quiz over your reading in Bradstreet (including Rich's Foreword and Hensley's Introduction). This afternoon (Wednesday) at 3:30, I'll be talking about Whitman's Leaves of Grass in the Iowa City Public Library (on the pedestrian mall), Meeting Room A. You're welcome to come.

For Monday, August 30: We will finish discussing Frost's "Stopping by Wooks on a Snowy Evening." Please read the poem again several times, and make notes particularly on how Frost's sentences relate to his stanzas. What happens when he runs a sentence across an entire stanza? How is it different when he incorporates two sentences in one stanza? How do his sentences work to emphasize the tensions in the poem we have been discussing? Meanwhile, keep reading the Bradstreet poems and prose, looking particularly carefully at "Burning of Our House," pp. 318-320, and "Contemplations," pp. 220-230. We will discuss the poems on the death of her grandchildren (pp. 257-259), so read those very carefully numerous times, and look up words to discover their etymologies, meanings, and connotations.

For Friday, August 27: Read carefully Bradstreet's three poems on the deaths of her grandchildren, pp. 257-259; her poem on the "Burning of Our House," pp. 318-320. We will finish talking about the winter poems on the original handout, and begin talking about Bradstreet's grandchildren poems.

For Wednesday, August 25: Read carefully the two introductory essays in the Bradstreet book--Adrienne Rich's "Anne Bradstreet and Her Poetry," and Jeannine Hensley's "Anne Bradstreet's Wreath of Thyme." Rich's essay will become a valuable measure for us of the shifts and movements of American poetry; it is an essay you will want to come back to and read again after we study Rich's poetry. Hensley's essay will give you background on Bradstreet's life and times, and discusses the odd publication history of her poems.

After reading the introductions, read carefully "Contemplations" on pp. 220-230 and the poems on pp. 238-261, and the letter to Bradstreet's children on pp. 262-267, and the poem on the burning of her house, pp. 318-320. By the end of next week, read all the poems and prose meditations on pp. 268-317 and 191-237 (this includes "Contemplations," which you've already read). And read at least one of her "quaternions"--"The Four Seasons of the Year," pp. 69-77, is the briefest. PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE PAGE NUMBERS HAVE BEEN REVISED TO CORRESPOND TO THE NEW EDITION THAT IS AVAILABLE AT PRAIRIE LIGHTS BOOKSTORE.

We will continue our discussion of William Wantling's "Poetry" and winter poems by Gary Snyder, Robert Frost,Wallace Stevens, and Emily Dickinson. (Poems are available here and on the Syllabus page.) As an informal writing assignment, write a paragraph (to be turned in during class on Wednesday) about one aspect of Snyder's "Pine Tree Tops" that you find is lost when we turn the poem from a poem into a prose paraphrase (as I've done below the copy of Snyder's poem I gave you). Focus on only one aspect of the poem, and try to articulate just why what is lost is important to our understanding of the poem.

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