21L.004 Reading Poetry:
Spring 2008

Tuesday-Thursday 11-12:30 in 56-167

The Broadview Anthology of Poetry (one-volume edition)

Billy Collins (editor), Poetry 180 (be wary -- Collins has another anthology with a very similar title: 180 More. That is not the one you want for this class.

PLAGIARISM (the use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement) is a very serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and also that the instructor will turn the matter over to the Committee on Discipline. Please note that these responses are not within my power to vary or bypass.

Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. Ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be labeled and properly footnoted. Further guidance on the proper forms of attribution may be found in the style guides available in the Writing and Communication Center (12-132), and at the MIT website on plagiarism at: http://web.mit.edu/writing/index.html.

It is presumed that all of the essays you submit (save for the required revision late in the term) must be the subject of a preliminary conference between you and Anne Snodgrass. I know you are busy. So am I. So is Anne. But be clear: this is a serious, even fundamental expectation. If I learn that you fail to make and keep an appointment with Anne, I will simply refuse to accept the essay, and will record an F in my grade book. When you do meet with her, it will be important to have written text to work on. So bring drafts with you, not vague plans and aspirations.

As to required writing:

First, about deadlines: yes, they are arbitrary. Yes, they are often highly inconvenient. But I have worked to arrange them to fit in well with class assignments and to avoid conflicts with deadlines in my other subject. So I simply cannot accept late papers. If you know you need an extension, be in touch with me early. Don't base your request on the dubious grounds that you are "busy." Face it, "busy" is the default condition, at MIT.

All essays should be left in the plastic receptacle on my office door. The "due date" extends until I arrive on campus the following day, usually around noon.

Assignment one (due January 19: according to the Institute, this is a Monday, so class does not meet that day). Length: seven pages (double spaced, one-inch margins all around, 12 to 14 point font). Select one of the following poems and write a precise, argumentative, analytic essay discussing how the language, imagery, and construction of the poem present, develop, and complicate the "theme" of the poem:

Thomas Wyatt, "The Longe Love, That In My Thought Doth Harbor"

The Earl of Surrey, "Love, That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought"

Sir Philip Sydney, "Loving in Truth" or "With How Sad Steps, O Moone"

Katherine Philips, "A Maryed State Affords But Little Ease"

Anne Bradstreet, "To My Dear and Loving Husband"

Due date: February 19

This essay is intended as a sort of diagnostic. I will comment upon it, but it will be graded only P/F (the P determined by whether you submit it in timely fashion)

Paper Two:

The essay should be the same size and shape as the first one (7 pp, double-spaced, one-inch margins). Now you will approach the analysis of a somewhat longer poem. Focus will be essential -- you will not, in the allotted space, be able to deal with every word/line. Present your argument efficiently, and then draw  your reader's attention to those aspects of the poem, or that portion of the poem, where it most richly approaches its major thematic concern. Again, your evidence should be words, images, and formal devices -- not summary/paraphrase or vast philosophical assertions.

Write about one of the following poems:

John Keats, "Ode on a Nightingale"

Percy Shelley, "Ode to the West Wind"

Samuel T. Coleridge, "Frost at Midnight"

William Wordsworth, "Elegaic Stanzas. . ."

Due date: March 17 (no extra credit if you use green ink)

This essay will be graded in the usual fashion (A, B, C etc)

Paper Three: At last, some nearly modern poetry!

Select one of the following poems, and write an essay (following the usual specifications) which offers a precise, argumentative critical analysis of it:

Louis MacNeice, "Snow"

W. H. Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"

Philip Larkin, "The Explosion" or "Here"

Eavan Boland, "The Black Lace Fan My Mother Gave Me"

Seamus Heaney, "Exposure"

Sylvia Plath, "The Colossus"

Margaret Atwood, "At the Tourist Center in Boston"

Due Date: April 23

Required Revision:

Select any of the three essays you have submitted (including the first, ungraded one if you choose) and revise/rewrite it. A good revision (the word, after all, means "seeing again") involves much more than just editorial polishing. It may, in fact, involve a complete rethinking of the original. When you submit this essay, do not give me the original -- how, how much, and in what ways you altered that earlier effort is beside the point. I will assess the essay as an independent piece of work. In this one case, you need not confer with Anne Snodgrass before you submit the assignment. To compel some serious re-thinking, this essay should run only FIVE pages long.

Due date: May 5

Final project:

Not, in the strict sense, a "writing" assignment at all. During the final days of the term, you will be expected to demonstrate your proficiency in poetic analysis by selecting a poem from Poetry 180, reading it expressively aloud to your classmates, and offering an in-class oral analysis of it, running about 10 minutes. These will occupy us in class on May 6, 8 and 13th

Note that these readings are meant to establish a context for our class discussions. "Doing the reading" should involve exploration, not a drive for completion.

(in about a week I will set up a schedule of "leadoff" assignments the task of that person will be to set the agenda for the day's class, by offering a provocative articulation of the "theme" of the poem of the day, or propounding a provocative question about the poem)

The task before us is to explore the rich and varied terrain of poetry written in English (mostly British and American) since the time of Shakespeare. Our mode of operation will be discussion. There is no conceivable way you can "get the notes" for a class you miss. For this reason, and due to the irrational but lifelong prejudices of the instructor, irregular attendance will have a direct negative impact on your term grade.

The syllabus proceeds topically, not chronologically or even nationally. This betrays two of the prejudices of the instructor -- first that poetry is a largely international enterprise, and that lines of influence pass freely across "the pond," as the Atlantic is sometimes facetiously called. Second, poems are about something. Hence the demand that you begin your written analyses with an articulation of what the poem you address is about.

Be warned any syllabus omits much fine poetry, so I will avail myself of the Professorial Impulse, and from time to time present to you, without forewarning, poems for our discussion.

Tuesday February 5: First meeting of the class.

PHASE ONE: An Encounter with the Master

Reading: Read the sampling of Shakespeare's sonnets to be found on pp. 31-35 of the anthology

February 7: for discussion: Sonnet 55

February 12: Sonnets 116 and 129. We'll break up into groups and try to make these two poems "fit" together.

February 14: Sonnet 73

February 18: Institute Holiday

February 19: A "Monday" in Kendall Square, so class does not meet. First essay due, however.

February 21: Sonnet 146

PHASE TWO: "What's Love Got to Do With It?"

Reading: the poems by Thomas Campion, Thomas Wyatt, Sir Philip Sydney, Lady Mary Wroth, Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey), Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe, Frost, "The Silken Tent, Larkin, "An Arundel Tomb," Fleur Adcock, "Wife to Husband," W. H. Auden, "Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love . . .,"

all in the anthology. Read attentively but also with a sense of exploration. Linger over poems that entice you, and consider what is the appeal they offer. February 26: Surrey, "Love that Doth Reign," and Wyatt, "The Longe Love"

February 28: some notions of Renaissance aesthetics. You can prepare by Googling "Penshurst" and taking a virtual tour of Penshurst Castle

March 4 Donne, "The Canonization" and "The Flea" Another small group day.

March 6: Marvell, "The Definition of Love"

PHASE THREE: The Nature of Nature

Reading: (again, read exploratively) Marvell, "The Garden,"Wordsworth, "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" and "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge," Coleridge, "Frost at Midnight," Keats, "To Autumn," Hopkins, Pied Beauty" and "The Windhover," Dickinson, "A narrow fellow in the Grass," Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" and "A Noiseless, Patient Spider," Housman, "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now," Frost, "After Apple Picking," Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" and "The Idea of Order at Key West" Williams, "Queen Anne's Lace," Lawrence, "Snake," Moore, "The Fish," Eberhart, "The Groundhog," Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish," Thomas, "The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower," Lowell, "Skunk Hour," Hughes, "Hawk Roosting" and ""Pike"

March 11: Marvell, "The Garden"

March 13: Professorial mutterings about Romanticism

March 17: second essay due.

March 18: Keats, "Autumn"

March 20: to warm up for the break, come to class prepared to present aloud a poem from Poetry 180. No analysis or defense required just read to us. This need not be the poem you choose for your final presentation, by the way.

Hooray, hoorah, calloo, callay, the frabjous time has come Spring Break. No homework, but two assignments (a) take at least one, preferably two, long nap(s). and (b) lug Poetry 180 along with you on the plane to Paris or Barcelona or Cancun, or home, or wherever. Browse amongst the riches contained within.

PHASE FOUR: faith, doubt, and loss

Reading: Poems by Herbert, Hopkins, and Donne in the anthology. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats," Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," Larkin, "Church Going," Eliot, "The Journey of the Magi," Roethke, "Elegy for Jane" and "Dolor," Lowell, "For the Union Dead," Bradstreet, "Upon the Burning of Our House"

April 1 (don't get cute, today): Donne, "Holy Sonnets"

April 3: Herbert, "The Collar"

April 8: Bradstreet, "Upon the Burning . . ."

April 10: Hopkins, "God's Grandeur" and "Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord"

April 15: Larkin, "Church Going"

PHASE FIVE: war

Reading: Poems by Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Henry Reed, Seigfried Sassoon in the anthology. Whitman, "Strange Vigil I Kept on the Field one Night,"

cummings, "i dream of Olaf. . .," Jarrell, "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"

April 17: propfessorial mutterings about Modernism

April 22: holiday. Class does not meet.

April 23: third essay due

April 24: Wilfred Owen

April 29: Ted Hughes, "Six Young Men" (Xeroxed)

May 1: Larkin, "MCMXIV" (Xeroxed)

May 5: required revision due

May 6, 8, and 13: final presentations