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· Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson , edited by Thomas H. Johnson (Little, Brown)

· Walt Whitman, Poetry and Prose , edited by Justin Kaplan (Library of America)

There are also two large cultural biographies of the poet that you will be reading in this term:

· Alfred Habegger, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (Modern Library)

· David Reynolds, Walt Whitman's America (Random House)

The other text you will need is a good dictionary, one that contains solid etymological information. Always look up words that appear in the poems, especially words you think you know. Dickinson and Whitman were inveterate readers of dictionaries. “Tracing words to origins,” Whitman wrote and underlined in an early notebook: “get in the habit of tracing words to their root-meanings.” It's a habit you need to develop this semester. In the Special Collections Department of the Main Library (third floor), you'll find a number of 19th-century dictionaries. These are the dictionaries Whitman and Dickinson used, and you will be surprised at the insights you will find by looking up the words they used in the actual dictionaries they used. It's good, too, to consult the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) frequently, since it gives you a history of the usage of each word. I have put links on the Resources part of the course webpage to the OED and to a nineteenth-century edition of Webster's American Dictionary, the dictionary Dickinson and Whitman habitually consulted.

The Instructor: My office is 373 EPB, on the third floor, down the hall from the elevator. My e-mail address is ed-folsom@uiowa.edu; my office phone is 335-0450 (with Voicemail, so you can leave a message if I'm not there). I'll usually be available before and after class, and my regular office hours are Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from 11:30 to 12:30. I can meet with you at other times by appointment. I'm always happy to discuss Dickinson and Whitman, and I'll be glad to talk with you about any of your concerns with the course.

The Course Website: Please get in the habit of checking this site daily. This is where you will always find the assignment for the next class, including informal writing assignments, and it is your responsibility to check the site before each class in order to prepare properly for the next class session.

The Course: We will focus on the work of the two major American poets of the nineteenth century, two of the most innovative and original poets ever to have written in the English language. Significantly, neither one was recognized as a major poet by the reading public during his or her own lifetime, though Whitman had a small but very devoted following. We will be coming at their poetry from a number of angles: biographical, cultural, aesthetic. We will talk about ways that their poetry has come to influence several generations of American poets who followed them. We'll weave in and out of their work, discussing ways they responded to key nineteenth-century events (like the Civil War, developing technology, changing notions of science and religion, women's rights movements) and ways they challenged orthodox views of writing poetry, of configuring gender, and of projecting America's future. We'll move back and forth between Whitman and Dickinson, looking for places where the work of one engages the work of the other and initiates a dialogue, a dialogue into which we will learn to insert ourselves.

The Memorizations: Because poetry really only begins working when it comes off the page and enters the rhythms of the reader's body, I want you to have the experience of truly internalizing some of Whitman's and Dickinson's poetry. In memorizing some of each poet's work, you will quickly discover the different ways they construct language; you'll find that Whitman's poetry "memorizes" in a distinctly different way from Dickinson 's. There is no better way to possess a poem and to be possessed by a poem than to memorize it. The philosopher Jacques Derrida says that to learn a poem by heart is the only way we ever experience an "embodiment" of a text: "Eat, drink, swallow my letter, carry it, keep it in you, like the law of a writing transformed into your body." By the end of the term you will memorize one or more complete poems by Dickinson , totaling at least 28 lines, and one section of Whitman's "Song of Myself" or another poem (with the exception of "O Captain! My Captain!") totaling at least 20 lines. By midterm, you will recite either the Dickinson or the Whitman poetry to me, and by the end of the term you will recite both.

The Essays: You will write three essays (4-5 pages each) about specific poems by Whitman and Dickinson. You will focus intensely on the distinctive ways that Whitman and Dickinson incorporate a particular idea or concern or emotion or social issue or formal element in their poems. For the most part, I will be asking you to work on poems about which not much has been written.

Your essays will be informed by your wide and careful reading in the works of both poets. I want you to discover the illumination that can occur when you come into contact—awake, intelligent, close contact—with the poems. It's a good idea to memorize the poems you are going to write about (or at least to say them aloud time and time again), to make the poems literally a part of you, to get the rhythms in your mind, to become obsessed with the poems until the meanings emerge from the close contact you develop with the images and the words, from an intimate encounter with the text.

Any unacknowledged use of anyone's ideas other than your own (plagiarism) constitutes, of course, automatic failure for the course. The idea, after all, is to learn to trust your own insights, and to inform those insights by an intelligent awareness (and an honest acknowledgment) of the most useful contexts for each poem.

The Exams and Quizzes: There will be a final exam. The final exam will deal with the biographies, but will mainly consist of a series of paired poems by the two poets that you will discuss in some creative and original ways. The final exam will be on Tuesday, May 8, from 10:00 to noon in our regular classroom. There will also be frequent quizzes covering the assigned biographical readings. These will test your careful reading of the assignments and will usually be true-false. They will reward you for doing the reading you are required to do. If you miss a quiz, you may take it immediately following the next class session; your grade will be reduced one grade unless you have an official university excuse for your absence. If you miss a second quiz, you may take it following the next class for a two-grade reduction. If you miss more than two quizzes, the missed quiz grades will be "F."

The Class Sessions: I want to challenge you to do your best work. You are taking a class, which means you are becoming a class, each of you an integral part of an evolving community of interpretation. The classroom experience can be vitalizing, but we all have to work at it. An occasional absence is your business, but frequent or sustained absences prevent you from becoming an organic, functioning part of the class. Class attendance, then, is expected and vital and necessary. Missing more than three class sessions, unexcused, will result in a full grade reduction for the course. What you say in class, ways that you help energize the class with your presence and participation, seem to me as important a factor in arriving at a final grade as the work you do on paper.

Grading: Your final grade will be based on a balance between eight units: (1) the quizzes form two of the units (first-half of the semester; second-half of the semester); (2) the essays form three units; (3) the final exam forms one unit; (4) the memorizations form one unit; (5) class participation, including informal writing assignments, forms one unit. You must do passable work on all areas of the course to earn a passing grade for the course. I use plus/minus grading, both for individual assignments and for course grades.

What was the United States like that Whitman and Dickinson were born into?

WALT WHITMAN is born in 1819, during America 's worst financial panic to date: a depression follows. The petition from Missouri for statehood begins a violent debate over slave and free territories in the West. The University of Virginia is founded by Thomas Jefferson, who designs its campus and buildings. A law forbidding the importation of slaves is being enforced, and slave smuggling becomes big business. The " Savannah ", a sailing ship with steam power, travels from Georgia to Liverpool in a record 26 days. Major Stephen Long, leading a mapping expedition out West, spends the winter at Council Bluffs and names the prairies "the Great American Desert ." Alabama becomes the 22nd state. James Russell Lowell and Herman Melville are born this same year. The U.S. population is just under 10 million, with population growth favoring the North, where 54% of people live. In 1820, the Missouri statehood bill is approved (part of Missouri Compromise), and at the state constitutional convention one of the most controversial proposals is a provision to outlaw all free blacks and mulattoes from the state. Daniel Boone dies in Missouri at age 85. James Monroe is elected President in an electoral college landslide over John Quincy Adams. First sighting (by a young Connecticut sea captain), south of Cape Horn, of land that would come to be known as Antarctica . New England missionaries land and infiltrate Hawaiian Islands . One-third of novels published in America are written by women. In 1821, Missouri becomes the 24th state, its population 65,000 (about the population of Iowa City today). New York constitutional convention, in a radical move, abolishes property qualifications for right to vote, but excludes free blacks from the right (and, of course, all women). Waterford (NY) Academy for Young Ladies is founded, first U.S. women's collegiate-level school. Santa Fe Trail is opened and traveled. In 1822, Spanish Florida, under Andrew Jackson's military care, is approved for U.S. territorial status; Jackson, after making a name for himself as an Indian fighter against the Seminoles, is nominated for President by Tennessee legislature, undermining the national party Congressional caucus system—"Jacksonian democracy" begins to be talked about. A planned slave revolt in South Carolina , led by Denmark Vesey (a free black), is discovered; 134 blacks are arrested, and 35 are hanged.

EMILY DICKINSON is born in 1830, the year President Andrew Jackson signs the Great Removal act, forcibly resettling all Indians west of the Mississippi; Jackson addresses the nation, "What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute?" The Sac and Fox tribes, over objections of chief Black Hawk, give up all their lands east of Mississippi River ; Choctaws do the same; other tribes like Chickasaws follow suit within a year or two. Only the Cherokees, literate farmers who wanted citizenship, hold out. In 1832, Black Hawk leads some Sac and Fox back across Mississippi into Illinois --they are eventually ambushed and massacred in the Michigan Territory , and Black Hawk is turned over to U.S. authorities by the Winnebago Indians. Major Congressional debate is over whether or not the sale of Western lands should be restricted; Western senators sense a plot by Eastern business interests to close the West so that cheap labor stays in the Northeast where factories demand low-paid workers. Joseph Smith publishes "The Book of Mormon", based on his deciphering of golden plates he claimed to have found on an upstate New York mountain, detailing the true church as descended through American Indians who were apparently part of the lost tribes of Israel (an idea quite common in early 19th-century America). The next year, 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville arrives in the U.S. and begins his journey around the country that would result in his massive book of observations, "Democracy in America ," including his analysis of “the three races in America ” (black, red, and white). Nat Turner, a Virginia slave who had visions from God of white spirits and black spirits engaged in bloody combat, leads a revolt with seven other slaves, killing his master and his family; with 75 insurgent slaves, he killed more than 50 whites on a two-day journey to Jerusalem, Virginia, where he was hanged along with sixteen of his companions (many other blacks are killed during the manhunt for Turner). The Turner Insurrection was the stuff of nightmares for white Southerners, who passed increasingly severe slave codes. The song " America " is sung for the first time in Boston on July 4.

Additional UI and CLAS Policies and Procedures

Administrative Home
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is the administrative home of this course and governs
matters such as the add/drop deadlines, the second-grade-only option, and other related issues.
Different colleges may have different policies. Questions may be addressed to 120 Schaeffer Hall, or
see the CLAS Student Academic Handbook.

Electronic Communication
University policy specifies that students are responsible for all official correspondences sent to their
University of Iowa e-mail address (@uiowa.edu). Faculty and students should use this account for
correspondences. (Operations Manual, III.15.2. Scroll down to k.11.)

Accommodations for Disabilities
A student seeking academic accommodations should first register with Student Disability Services
and then meet privately with the course instructor to make particular arrangements. See
www.uiowa.edu/~sds/ for more information.

Academic Fraud
Plagiarism and any other activities when students present work that is not their own are academic
fraud. Academic fraud is a serious matter and is reported to the Director of Undergraduate Studies,
Lori Branch, and to the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Curriculum, Helena
Dettmer. The instructor and Director of Undergraduate Studies decide on appropriate consequences
at the departmental level while the Associate Dean enforces additional consequences at the
collegiate level. See the CLAS Academic Fraud section of the Student Academic Handbook.

CLAS Final Examination Policies
Final exams may be offered only during finals week. No exams of any kind are allowed during the
last week of classes. Students should not ask their instructor to reschedule a final exam since the
College does not permit rescheduling of a final exam once the semester has begun. Questions
should be addressed to the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs and Curriculum, Helena
Dettmer.

Making a Suggestion or a Complaint
Students with a suggestion or complaint should first visit the instructor, then the course supervisor,
and then the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Professor Barbara Eckstein. Complaints must be made within six
months of the incident. See the CLAS Student Academic Handbook.

Understanding Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment subverts the mission of the University and threatens the well-being of students,
faculty, and staff. All members of the UI community have a responsibility to uphold this mission and
to contribute to a safe environment that enhances learning. Incidents of sexual harassment should
be reported immediately. See the UI Comprehensive Guide on Sexual Harassment for assistance,
definitions, and the full University policy; see also here.

Reacting Safely to Severe Weather
In severe weather, class members should seek appropriate shelter immediately, leaving the
classroom if necessary. The class will continue if possible when the event is over. For more
information on Hawk Alert and the siren warning system, visit the Public Safety web site.

Copyright © Ed Folsom, The University of Iowa. All rights reserved. Homepage: http://www.english.uiowa.edu/faculty/folsom
Updated January 16, 2012.