English 98: Junior Tutorial This Century in American Poetry (1914-2014) Course Requirements: weekly attendance and active participation in tutorial sessions oral presentation (15 min) on theoretical, critical, or historical readings prospectus (2pp) and bibliography (2pp) in preparation for Junior Paper library consultation with Laura Farwell-Blake, English Dept. Research Librarian Junior Paper (20-25pp) Required Texts: The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vols. 1 and 2, ed. Ramazani, Ellmann and O’Clair (2003) The New American Poetry, 1945-1960, ed. Donald Allen (1999) other literary and critical readings, available online in .pdf format Schedule of Readings Week 1: Fragments and Ruins: Archaeologies of Modernism Ezra Pound, selections from Cathay (1915), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920) T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Preludes” (1917), The Waste Land (1922) Pound, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste” (1913), selections from ABC of Reading (1934) Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) Week 2: Flux and Materials: Principles of Aesthetic Construction Gertrude Stein, selections from Tender Buttons (1914), “If I Told Him” (1923) Ezra Pound, selections from A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930) Franco Marinetti, “Futurist Manifesto” (1909) Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, BLAST (1914): “Long Live the Vortex!”, “Manifesto – 1,” “Manifesto – 2” Pound, “Machine Art” (1927-30) Wendy Steiner, selection from Exact Resemblance to Exact Resemblance: Literary Portraiture of Gertrude Stein (1979) Week 3: The Poet as Visionary I: Hart Crane Hart Crane, selections from White Buildings (1926), selections from The Bridge (1930) Crane, “A Letter to Harriet Monroe” (1926) Harold Bloom, introduction to The Complete Poems of Hart Crane (2001)
John Berryman, selections from The Dream Songs (1969) Robert Lowell, “John Berryman” (1964) Helen Vendler, selection from The Given and the Made (1995) Adam Kirsch, selection from The Wounded Surgeon (2005) Week 9: The Poet as Visionary II: The Black Mountain Poets and the Beats Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” [whole poem], selections from Howl (1956) Robert Creeley, poems Jack Spicer, poems Charles Olson, “Projective Verse” (1950) Denise Levertov, “Some Notes on Organic Form” (1965) Paul Breslin, selection from The Psycho-Political Muse: American Poetry Since the Fifties (1987) Week 10: The Poet as Philosopher II: John Ashbery and the New York School John Ashbery, selections from Some Trees (1956) and Houseboat Days (1977), “The System” from Three Poems (1972), “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror” (1975) Frank O’Hara, selections from Meditations in an Emergency (1957) and Lunch Poems (1964) Frank O’Hara, “Personism: A Manifesto” (1959) John Ashbery, “The Art of Poetry 33” [interview], The Paris Review (1983) Christopher Nealon, “John Ashbery’s Optional Apocalypse,” from The Matter of Capital (2011) ** ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE ** Week 11: Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Poetics Adrienne Rich, selections from The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems 1950-2001 (2002) Rita Dove, selections from Thomas and Beulah (1986) and Mother Love (1996) Louise Glück, selections from Poems 1962-2012 (2013) Adrienne Rich, “When We Dead Awaken” and “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1979-1985) Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury” (1985) Louise Glück, “Against Sincerity,” from Proofs and Theories (1995) Week 12: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E: Revisions of Subjectivity Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews, eds., selections from The LANGUAGE Book (1984) Lyn Hejinian, selections from My Life (1987) Susan Howe, selections from The Midnight (2003) Robert Grenier, “I HATE SPEECH” (1971) Marjorie Perloff, “Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject” (1999)