Meets in Vaughan Literature Building 101
MWF 10:00 - 10:52
 

John Rickard
Office: Vaughan Lit. 209C

Office Phone: 524-1424
 

e-mail: rickard@bucknell.edu

WWW homepage: http://www.bucknell.edu/~rickard

TEXTS
 

Please try to obtain the editions listed below, so that we can all work with the same texts and pagination. If you have a problem obtaining any of these texts, please let me know.
 

The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Third Edition (NA)

Michael Meyer, Thinking and Writing About Literature (Meyer)
 

This is a provisional syllabus; changes will be discussed and announced in class. We may decide we need to spend more time on some things and less on others, and I want our course this semester to be flexible in responding to our changing needs and interests. We may get rid of some poems as we go along, based on what you enjoy or decide you want to explore, and certainly I will think of poems I want to bring in as we move along. Therefore, we should regard this first syllabus as more of a suggestion than a final document.

You are responsible for learning of and responding to syllabus changes during the semester. I will expect you to have the works read by the first day they are listed on the syllabus. Copies of the syllabus, revisions to the syllabus, and other relevant materials related to EN91 can be found on my WWW homepage (address above).

Wednesday, 24 January--Business matters; What is Poetry?

Friday, 26 January--Poems About Poetry

READ: Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky," NA 825
Ishmael Reed, "beware : do not read this poem," NA 1370
Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck," NA 1315
Craig Raine, "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home," NA 1397

Monday. 29 January--Poems About Poetry

READ: Wallace Stevens, "The Snow Man," NA 928
Marianne Moore, "Poetry," NA 986
Archibald Macleish, "Ars Poetica," NA 1029
A. R. Ammons, "Poetics," NA 1258
Leslie Marmon Silko, "How to Write a Poem about the Sky," NA 1401

**Please bring a blank disk and your Coral log-on**

Monday, 5 February--Poetic Form

READ: Meyer, 1-17, "Versification," NA 1403-1423
George Herbert, "Easter Wings," NA 254
e.e. cummings, "l(a," NA 1047
John Hollander, "Swan and Shadow," NA 1308
Sylvia Plath, "Metaphors," Handout

Wednesday, 7 February--Love Poetry

READ: Meyer, 18-24 and 55-65
"Alison," NA 5
Thomas Wyatt, "Whoso List to Hunt," NA 90 and "They Flee from Me," NA 91
William Shakespeare, Sonnets #18, 29, 116, and 130, NA 186-190

 

**Limericks Due**

READ: John Donne, "The Sun Rising," NA 206, "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," NA 212, "The Relic," NA 215, Elegy XIX: To his Mistress...," NA 216
John Donne, "The Flea," Handout
Robert Herrick, "The Vine," NA 242 and "Delight in Disorder," NA 243
Adrienne Rich, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," NA 1314

Monday, 12 February--Love Poetry

READ: Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress," and Diane Ackerman, "A Fine, a Private Place," Meyer, 33-44
George Gordon, Lord Byron, "She Walks in Beauty," NA 589
Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee," NA 697
Emily Dickinson, "Wild Nights--Wild Nights!," NA 806
Edna St. Vincent Millay, "I, Being Born a Woman . . .," NA 1033

Wednesday, 14 February--Love Poetry

READ: Robert Frost, "Never Again Would Birds' Song Be the Same," NA 922
e.e. cummings, "since feeling is first," NA 1042 and "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond," NA 1043
**Paper 1 Draft Workshop**

READ: Theodore Roethke, "My Papa's Waltz," NA 1117 and "I Knew a Woman," NA 1120
Gregory Corso, "Marriage," NA 1321
Selected handouts

READ: John Donne, "Death, be not proud," NA 222
Ben Jonson, "On My First Daughter" and "On My First Son," NA 224
Henry King, "The Exequy," NA 251

Wednesday, 21 February--Poems of Death and Mourning

READ: Walt Whitman, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," NA 775
Emily Dickinson, "I heard a Fly buzz--when I died," NA 809
**Paper 1 Draft Due**

READ: W. H. Auden, "Musée des Beaux Arts," NA 1100
Theodore Roethke, "Elegy for Jane," NA 1118
Dylan Thomas, "A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire...," NA 1179, and "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," NA 1181

Monday, 26 February--Poems of Death and Mourning

READ: Allen Ginsberg, "Howl," 1273
Sylvia Plath, "Daddy," NA 1352, and "Lady Lazarus," NA 1354

Wednesday, 28 February--Poems of Death and Mourning

READ: Seamus Heaney, "Mid-Term Break," NA 1379 and sonnets from Clearances (handouts)
And selected handouts

READ: John Donne, "Batter my heart, three-personed God," NA 222
George Herbert, "The Collar," NA 262, and "The Forerunners," NA 266
Anne Bradstreet, "Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, NA 325
Christopher Smart, "Jubilate Agno," NA 470
**Paper 1 due

READ: Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach," NA 794
Emily Dickinson, "'Faith' is a fine invention," NA 804, "The Bible is an antique Volume," NA 816, and "Those--dying then," NA 817
Thomas Hardy, "Hap," NA 844
Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur" and "The Windhover," NA 855

Wednesday, 6 March--Religious Poetry

READ: W. B. Yeats, "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop," NA 891
Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning," NA 929
Stevie Smith, "Thoughts about the Person from Porlock," NA 1074

Friday, 8 March--Religious Poetry

READ: Meyer, 65-69 and 94-114
Philip Larkin, "High Windows," Handout
Gjertrud Schnackenburg, "Supernatural Love," Handout

Monday, 11 March--War Poetry

READ: Thomas Hardy, "Drummer Hodge" and "Channel Firing," NA 845 and 849
Walt Whitman, "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night," NA 768
Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier," Handout
Siegfried Sassoon, "The Hero," Handout

Wednesday, 13 March--War Poetry

READ: Isaac Rosenberg, "Break of Day in the Trenches," "Louse Hunting," and "Dead Man's Dump," NA 1022-1025
Wilfred Owen, "Strange Meeting," "Anthem for Doomed Youth," and "Dulce Et Decorum Est," NA 1035-1037

Friday, 15 March--War Poetry

READ: e. e. cummings, "'next to of course god america i'" and "i sing of Olaf glad and big," NA 1042
W. H. Auden, "The Shield of Achilles," NA 1106
Randall Jarrell, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," NA 1166
Seamus Heaney, "Punishment," NA 1382

**M 18 Mar - F 22 Mar Spring Break--No Classes!**

READ: John Keats, "The Eve of St. Agnes," NA 650 and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," NA 658

READ: Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess," NA 717
W. B. Yeats, "The Stolen Child," NA 875
Edwin Arlington Robinson, "Richard Cory," NA 899

READ: Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken," NA 913
Stevie Smith, "Not Waving but Drowning," NA 1073
Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish," NA 1136
John Stallworthy, "The Almond Tree," NA 1366

READ: NA, 496-503

 

**Paper 2 due**

READ: NA, 503-511
And selected handouts

Continue as above

READ: Meyer, 138-149
All Dickinson selections in NA

READ: Meyer, 150-169
All Dickinson selections in NA

READ: All Dickinson selections in NA
And selected handouts

READ: T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," NA 994, and The Waste Land, NA 1000

READ: The Waste Land, NA 1000

Friday, 19 April--Selected Modern Poets

READ: W. B. Yeats, "The Scholars," NA 881, "The Second Coming," NA 883, and "Leda and the Swan," NA 888

READ: Robert Frost, "Design," NA 921, and "The Gift Outright" and "The Most of It," NA 923

READ: William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "This is Just to Say," NA 945
H.D., "Sea Violet" and "Helen," NA 979
Sylvia Plath, "Mirror," Handout
And assorted handouts

READ: Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask," 904
Jean Toomer, "Portrait in Georgia" and "Harvest Song," NA 1048
Claude McKay, "The Harlem Dancer," Handout
Langston Hughes, all poems in NA

Monday, 29 April--Selected Modern Poets

READ: Gwendolyn Brooks, "kitchenette building," The Bean Eaters" and "We Real Cool," NA 1182-3, and "The Boy Died in My Alley," Handout
Audre Lorde, All poems in NA
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Facing It," Handout
And assorted handouts

READ: Adrienne Rich, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," NA 1309
Margaret Atwood, "Spelling," NA 1378
And assorted handouts

Monday, 6 May--Selected Contemporary Poems

Course Summary and Evaluation

**Final Paper Due**

Poetry has been defined as "organized violence committed upon everyday speech." This class will try to understand poetry as a special kind of speech and writing, working with examples of poetry drawn from a variety of historical periods and cultures. We will explore the various uses and shapes of poetry, poetic form and meter, the generic expectations various forms raise, and the ways writers conform to and violate those expectations. We will survey the boundary lines between song and poetry, as well as new resources for poetry on the World Wide Web. Although this is not a creative writing class, students will have opportunities to write poems. In our reading, discussion, and writing we will strive to develop the vocabulary and skills connected with the analysis of literary texts.

English 91 will provide you with lots and lots of poems to read, from early epics, sacred songs, and riddles to recent poetry and lyrics. The class will cover many well-known, traditional poets and poems as well as more contemporary and lesser-known writers. We will attend to questions of translation, form, literary history, and cultural differences. We will work on developing reading, writing, and critical thinking skills through discussion, papers, exams, and in-class writings.

Although at times I will lecture in order to present background information, I do expect enthusiastic class participation in discussion and in other in-class activities. I expect you to keep up with the reading and to prepare for class. Class attendance in a literature class is essential for a good grade; therefore, I expect you to attend class regularly, to be prepared for class, and to participate when you are here. Excessive absences (or tardiness) will hurt your grade in English 91--after three absences your participation grade will begin to drop. More than four absences will mean that you must take a make-up final exam (see below).

ASSIGNMENTS:

Papers: (1 and 2) two shorter essays, the first a brief explication of a poem of your choice (see Meyer, pp. 18-24), and the second an analysis focusing on your own intrepretation of a critical problem, a crucial passage, or a comparison of elements from one or more poems (approximately 5-7 pages); (3) a poetry project, which will require you to memorize and recite a poem in class; you will follow your recitation with a brief oral report, in which you will explicate the poem, discussing scansion and giving a close reading of and reaction to the poem. Following your report, you must turn in a short (3-5 page) paper that includes a scanned copy of the poem and a detailed summary of your explication; and (4) a research paper (approx. 10 pages), incorporating researched sources to support an argument about one or more of the works we've read.

Final Exam: There will be a final examination, given only to those who miss more than four classes; this examination is mandatory for those with more than four absences and will serve only as a compensation for missed classes--it will not help your final grade.

Evaluation:

Paper 1 (March 1) -- 15%

 Paper 2 (April 1) -- 20%

 Poetry Project (due as scheduled) -- 20%

 Research Paper -- 30%

 Class Participation (including quizzes) -- 15%