Ira Sadoff

isadoff@colby.edu
Dana Professor of Poetry
Department of English

(207) 872-3297
Office: Miller Library 224
Office Hours: Tuesday/Thursday 2:30-4 p.m.
and by appointment


Modern American Poetry
Syllabus

 
DATE ASSIGNMENT Supplementary
Sept.4 Intro lecture  
Sept.9 Frost "Acquainted with the Night,"p.139 "Come In,"p.151 "For Once then something" p.133 "Neither Far Out Nor Deep," "To Earthward,""The Draft Horse""The Wood-Pile"
Sept.11 "Design"p.148"Directive"p.155 Essays on Form (web) http://home.t-online.de/home/Bernhard.Hiller/wstewart/OtherOfferings/PoetryCorner/Frost/FigureAPoemMakes.html "Fire and Ice" "The Silken Tent" "Tree at My Window" "Two Tramps in Mud Time"
Sept.17 temporal "Birches," p.121,"Mending Wall," p.106 "An Old Man's Winter night, "Nothing God Can Stay," "The Oven Bird" "Out, Out""Spring Pools,""Provide, Provide""After Apple-Picking"
Sept.19 Pound from A RETROSPECT: a few don'ts, language, credo, re: vers libre WEB http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/pound/retrospect.htm "In a Station of the Metro,"P.514, The River Merchant's Wife"p.520 "Liu Ch'e," p.516,Canto 2
Sept.24 Williams, essay excpts. WEB "The Red Wheelbarrow" p.453" This is Just to Say" p.460 "Portrait of a Lady" WEB "Pastoral,"P.426-7,"Somebody Dies Every 4 MinutesŠ"pp/454-5,"
Sept.26 "Dance Russe" WEB "The Young Housewife,"P.426"The Yachts,"p.461, "To Daphne and Virginia" p. 481, "The Dance""Queen-anne's lace"p.437
Oct. 1 "The Widow's Lament"p.438,""Spring and All" p.439 "The Last Words of my English Grandmother""These""To Elsie(The PureŠp.450)"
OCT. 3 Williams, excpt, PATERSON (handout); Marcia Nardi poems web "Preludes" "La Figlia Che Pianga" "Gerontin"p.741
OCT.8 Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent" web; http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html
"The lovesong of Alfred Prufrock"P.728
"Burnt Norton" p.783
Oct. 10* Eliot, "The Lovesong of Alfred Prufrock" continued p.728 PAPER 1 DUE  
OCT. 15 FALL BREAK  
OCT. 17 Eliot, "The Wasteland" p.744 See website for notes; arguments will arrive via email
OCT. 22 Eliot, "The Wasteland"(continued)  
Oct. 24 Hughes ALL WEB "The Negro and the Racial mountain" http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/hughes/mountain.htm
"The Weary blues" "Theme for English 2b" "I, too"
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "To Midnight Nan, "At Leroy's "Drama for a Winter Night" "God to a Hungry Child" "Madam and the Phone Bill" "Po' Boy Blues" WEB
Oct. 29 Jazz, Harlem renaissance (web for lyrics) careless water,"p.185, "colored hats"p.187 "A table,"p.189, "a long dress" p.182 "a chair" p.183
Oct. 31 Stein "Composition as Explanation," WEB http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no8/stein.html
"Picasso" web "A box" p.178 "a piece of coffee" p.179
Nov. 5-7 Stein cont.(excpt from Lifting Belly ) Hejinian NICHOLSON, Postmodernism essay (Web)  
Nov.12 Mina Loy "On Third Avenue," pp.411-412 from SONGS To JANNES,111,V, SONGS TO JANNES sequence
Nov.14 Stevens "On Imagination" Web "The Snow Man," "The World as Meditation," "Anecdote of the Jar" "The Man on the Dump," "Poetry is a Destructive Force,""Peter Quince at the Clavier," "The Poems of Our Climate," p.315
Nov.19 Culture "Loneliness in Jersey City," The man on the Dump," "Mozart 1935" "Resisting the Contemporaneous." Essay excpt (web) "A Postcard From the Volcano" "Death of a Soldier," "The Emperor of Ice Cream" "Six Significant Landscapes"
Nov.21* Religion "The Idea of Order at Key West" "Sunday Morning," "The Pleasures of Merely Circulating" PAPER 2 "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" "Theory" "Tattoo" "Explanation"
Nov.26sensuality "Floral decorations" "Domination of Black" followed by Thanksgiving break  
Dec.3 sensuality "Floral decorations" "Domination of Black"  
Dec.5 Marianne Moore "Marriage''p.695 "Poetry" p.692 "The Frigate Pelican" "A grave, p.693 "The Pangolin"p..711 "Critics and Connoisseurs,p.681
  FINAL TAKE HOME PAPER due day and time of final

REQUIREMENTS:

1. Students will write TWO 6-7 page papers comparing and contrasting the visions of two poems(or analyzing one longer poem), OR will write ONE 12-15 Page theoretically based paper (psychoanalytic, feminist, structuralist, deconstructionist, Marxist, or New Historicist, semiotic, etc.) raising an issue that illuminates a context for the poems under discussion. To write this paper, a student should already be familiar with the theory and be prepared to use some representative critics who argue with and reinforce the student's theoretical position. A thesis argument will be due by October 3oth, and will be due on November 18th.

DON'T WRITE PAPERS ON POEMS DISCUSSED IN CLASS.

2.Additionally, approximately every other week you'll be assigned focus questions and dialogue for class discussion. The forums can be found on the web and I shall give out the questions in the class preceding the due date. If you miss class, get the assignment from me or another class member.

http://www.colby.edu/info.tech/forums/clogin/login.cfm?confId=1&forumId=9

3. Everyone will write a long take-home paper (10-12 pages) at the end of the semester, synthesizing some of the important concepts raised during class discussion.

Grades: Each 6-7 page paper will be worth 25% of your grade, the final paper 35%, class and forum participation 15%. Long theoretical papers will count 50% of your grade.

Attendence: WE ARE A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS. Students will be expected to prepare poems before they are discussed in class. You will be permitted no more than three unexcused absences. Class discussion counts toward your grade. If a student misses classes, it's his or her responsibility to make up that material.

Late papers: Students will be permitted one one-week extension on one of their two papers, assuming they give me more than twenty-four hours advance notice before the papers is due. No late papers on the long critical paper. I will subtract a grade from unexcused late papers.


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All materials posted on these pages were created to support classroom activities in the teaching of Modern American Poetry this semester only. Copyright guidelines should be followed by any person using the works on these pages.