Course: Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)
Modules:
watch an introduction to week 1, watch video on Emily Dickinson's "I dwell in Possibility", watch video on Dickinson's "Tell all the truth but tell it slant", watch further discussion on "Tell all the truth", watch video on Emily Dickinson's "The Brain within its Groove" (part 1), watch video on Emily Dickinson's "The Brain within its Groove" (part 2), watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 1, watch video on Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" (part 1), watch video on Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself” (part 2), watch video on canto 47 of "Song of Myself", watch discussion of Divya Victor's "W is for Walt Whitman's Soul", (alt.) watch abridged video on Victor's "W is for Walt...", watch Divya Victor discuss "W is for Walt Whitman's Soul", watch video discussion of the Whitmanian and Dickinsonian modes
watch an introduction to week 2, watch video on William Carlos Williams’s “Smell!”, watch video on William Carlos Williams's "Danse Russe", watch video on Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California", watch video on Lorine Niedecker's "Grandfather Advised Me", watch video on Lorine Niedecker's "You are my friend", watch video on Lorine Niedecker's "Foreclosure", watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 2, watch video on Cid Corman's "It isnt for want", watch video on Rae Armantrout's "The Way", watch video on distinctions between “Dickinsonian” and “Whitmanian” proto-modernism
watch an introduction to week 3, watch video on H.D.'s "Sea Rose", watch video on Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro", watch video on Ezra Pound's "The Encounter", watch further discussion on "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird", watch a discussion of Tonya Foster's haiku (with the poet), watch a PoemTalk discussion of Tonya Foster's haiku, watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 3
watch video on Williams's "Lines", watch video on Williams's "Between Walls", watch video on Williams’s “This Is Just to Say”, watch/hear Williams on poems as words not thoughts, watch video on Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow", watch video discussion on Duchamp’s “Fountain”, watch video on Williams's "Portrait of a Lady", watch video on Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase"
watch an introduction to week 4, watch video on Stein's "A Long Dress", watch further discussion on "A Long Dress", watch video on Stein's "A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass", watch video on "Water Raining" and "Malachite", watch video on Stein's ideas about narrative, composition, repeating & nouns, watch video on Stein's "Let Us Describe", watch video on Stein's "If I Told Him", watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 4
listen to a ModPo'er perform "A Dozen Cocktails", watch video on Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, watch video on Tristan Tzara's "To Make a Dadaist Poem", watch video on Bishop's "A Recollection" and the sonnet in modernism
watch an introduction to week 5, watch video on Ruth Lechlitner's "Lines for an Abortionist's Office", watch video on Genevieve Taggard's "Interior"
watch/listen to Al Filreis on "Yet Do I Marvel", watch video discussion of Cullen’s “Incident”, watch video on McKay's "If We Must Die", watch video on Hughes's "Dinner Guest: Me", watch video on teaching Hughes’s “Dinner Guest: Me”, watch video on Brooks’s “Boy Breaking Glass”
watch video on Frost's "Mending Wall"
watch video on Wilbur's "The Death of a Toad", watch further discussion of Wilbur's "The Death of a Toad", watch video on Kennedy’s “Nude Descending a Staircase”, watch further discussion on Kennedy's "Nude Descending a Staircase"
watch an introduction to week 6, watch video on the first section of Ginsberg's "Howl" (part 1), watch video on the first section of Ginsberg's "Howl" (part 2), (alt.) watch abridged version of discussion of "Howl", watch video on Kerouac's ideas about prose, (alternative) watch short version of video on Kerouac's ideas about prose, on Kerouac's "Old Angel Midnight", (alt.) abridged version of video on Kerouac's "Old Angel Midnight", watch ModPo TAs debate spontaneity & first thought/best thought, watch video: can we do a close reading of babble flow?, watch video on Bob Kaufman's "Jail Poems", watch Doug Kearney & others on "Jail Poems", watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 6, watch video on Creeley's "I Know a Man", watch video on Waldman's "Rogue State", watch video on Baraka's "Incident", watch video on Baraka's "How You Sound??", watch video on Jayne Cortez's "She Got He Got"
watch an introduction to week 7, watch discussion of O’Hara's “The Day Lady Died”, watch/listen to Koch perform "Variations on a Theme", watch video on Koch's “Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams”, watch video on Ashbery's “The Instruction Manual”, watch further discussion of Ashbery’s “The Instruction Manual”, watch video on Guest's “20”, watch further discussion of Guest’s “20”, watch video on James Schuyler's "February", watch video on Ashbery's "Some Trees" (part 1), watch video on Ashbery's "Some Trees" (part 2), watch video on Mayer’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 7, watch a discussion of Eileen Myles' "Mount St. Helens", watch discussion of Hanif Abdurraqib's "USAvCUBA", watch video on Patrick Rosal's "Uptown Ode That Ends on an Ode to the Machete" Part I, watch video on Patrick Rosal's "Uptown Ode That Ends on an Ode to the Machete" Part II, (alt.) watch abridged discussion of Rosal's poem (20 mins.)
watch an introduction to week 8 (12 mins.), optional 24-min. supplemental intro to Language poetry, watch video on Hejinian’s My Life (part 1), watch video on Hejinian’s My Life (part 2), (alt.) watch abridged version of discussion of Hejinian's "My Life", watch video on Perelman’s "Chronic Meanings", watch video on Bernstein’s "In a Restless World Like This Is", watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 8, watch video on Howe’s “My Emily Dickinson”, watch brief video introducing Mullen's "Sleeping with the Dictionary", watch video on Mullen’s “Sleeping with the Dictionary”, watch discussion of John Keene's "Persons and Places" on location
watch an introduction to week 9, watch video on Cage's "Writing through Howl", watch video on Cage’s adagia, watch video on Mac Low's "A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore", watch video on Mac Low's approach to Stein, watch video on Osman's "Dropping Leaflets", watch video on Bernadette Mayer's writing experiments, watch video on Retallack's "Not a Cage", watch further discussion of Retallack's "Not a Cage"
watch an introduction to week 10, watch video on Bök’s “Eunoia”, watch video on Baum’s “Card Catalogue” and “Dog Ear”, watch video on Caroline Bergvall's "VIA", watch video on Magee’s “Pledge” & “My Angie Dickinson”, watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 10, watch video on Waldrop’s “Shorter American Memory”, watch discussion of Nasser Hussain's SKY WRI TEI NGS, (alt.) watch abridgement of Nasser Hussain discussion, watch discussion of Jordan Abel's "The Place of Scraps", (alt.) watch abridged version of Jordan Abel discussion, watch video on Tracie Morris’s “Africa(n)” & final words