The Texts: All are available at Prairie Lights Bookstore, 15 South Dubuque Street. It is crucial that you have the exact editions of the poetry listed here so that we can easily move around the texts together:

· 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. 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 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 this course webpage to the OED and to an early-twentieth-century dictionary (in which the definitions are closer to those known to Whitman and Dickinson).

The Instructor: My office is 458 EPB, on the fourth floor near 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 Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:45 to noon . 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: 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," totaling at least 15 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 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 is scheduled for Tuesday, December 13, at 2:15, in this 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 for three of the units; (3) the memorizations form one unit; (4) the final exam forms one unit; (5) class participation, including informal writing assignments, forms one unit. I do use plus/minus grades.

Time Expectation: The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences wants me to remind you that this is a three-hour course and that the general expectation for time you spend outside the course for reading, writing, and course preparation should be around six hours per week. This will vary from student to student, of course, but that's the general guideline, and I'll be making assignments with that guideline in mind.

Students with Disabilities: If you have a disability which may require some modification of seating, testing, or other class requirements, please let me know so that we can make appropriate arrangements. See me after class or during my office hours.

Other Concerns: If you have general concerns, problems, or complaints about the class, please come talk to me so that we can try to resolve things. If you are not satisfied with the resolution, you may make an appointment to discuss your concern with Professor Douglas Trevor, director of the undergraduate program, in 308 EPB. Appeals of Professor Trevor's decisions go to Professor Jonathan Wilcox, chair of the English Department, and then to the College of Liberal Arts Academic Programs Office. The full policy covering student complaint procedures and other academic concerns is available in the Student Academic Handbook, available online at: http://www.clas.uiowa.edu/students/academic_handbook/

This course is offered by the College of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This means that class policies on matters such as requirements, grading, and sanctions for academic dishonesty are governed by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Students wishing to add or drop this course after the official deadline must receive the approval of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Details of the University policy of cross enrollments may be found at: http://www.uiowa.edu/~provost/deos/crossenroll.doc

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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". 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.