ENGLISH 401:

ADVANCED POETRY WRITING
TTh: 1:30-2:45pm; Oddfellows 222.

Christopher Bakken Office: Oddfellows 220

Tel: 332 4338
Office Hours:: M/W 9-11am; T/Th 10-11am.
e-mail: cbakken@allegheny.edu

COURSE OBJECTIVES:
Since this course is designed, in part, to prepare some of you for a senior project in creative writing, your practical objective will be rather ambitious: to produce a group of poems that show a level of verbal sophistication, musicality, and ambition. You will also consider how individual poems might work together in the composition of a manuscript. For this reason, we will read several complete volumes of poetry and we will spend time considering how a collection of poems is put together.

Your aesthetic objective is more complicated. For the duration of this course, you will have something few poets have: an immediate and attentive audience; you will make up part of an audience for other poets in kind. As readers, we will try to find ways to locate what works, what moves us, what sings in any poem, and especially in our own poems. In this way, we will perform an essentially positive function for one another; encouragement and support make a workshop work. But no workshop works without a corresponding risk: honesty. We will perform, then, an equally important negative function for one another. Richard Hugo, in his book The Triggering Town, defines this negative function like so: "We teach how not to write and we teach writers to teach themselves how not to write." At least, by the end of this course you should have a better sense of how not to write. With courage and perseverance, you may even have a better sense of how to write and you might have some strong poems of your own as proof of this accomplishment.

EVALUATION:
The grade assigned to your work in this course will be determined by your ability to produce and submit poems and to complete other assignments (including one formal presentation) in a timely, professional and diligent manner. Class participation will also comprise an important part of your final grade.

1. Portfolio: Each of you will produce a portfolio of your poems (consisting of at least ten poems) by the end of the term. Since all creative work in this course will be considered "in progress," you need not worry about being "graded" on the success of individual drafts. All of the poems in your portfolio will be revisions of previously submitted work. Your final grade will depend on the success of your final portfolio and the quality of the revisions submitted there.

2. Presentation: You will give one formal presentation this semester. Early on you will be assigned a poet/book/sequence of poems; your task will be to lead a discussion on these texts for a class period. These presentations will require some research, close reading, and fairly intensive preparation. There will be no "make up" presentations. If you are not prepared to give your presentation on the due date or if you do not "attend" your own presentation, you should not expect to pass the course.

3. Class Participation & Attendance: You will also be asked to provide spoken and written critiques on the work of your peers; your participation in this activity will be considered in formulating your final grade. Since the course is organized as a workshop, attendance and class participation are mandatory. Students who miss more than four classes will find their grade lowered by as much as a full letter grade. Students who miss more than six classes should not expect to pass. Attendance at Single Voice Readings (indicated on the syllabus) and other campus literary events is mandatory.

Read the essay "Elegy and Eros" by David Baker

TEXTS:

Required:
Philip Larkin, Collected Poems

David Baker, Never-Ending Birds

Geoffrey Brock, Weighing Light

Elizabeth Bishop, Collected Poems
Cesare Pavese, Disaffections

Willard Spiegelman, Seven Pleasures
Parnassus: Poetry in Review Vol. 31, #1 & 2

Click on the cover to subscribe to Parnassus: Poetry in REview

ASSIGNMENTS:
Most of the poems you write for this course will be produced under unusual and rather extreme conditions. You will be given deadlines that will afford little time for inspiration, brooding or procrastination. The good news is that you will sometimes be responding to assignments; this should take some of the "creative pressure" off of you. The other bit of good news is that every other writer in the course will be under the same restrictions. Take these assignments very seriously (you'll certainly learn something if you do), but also think of them as exercises, not instant masterpieces. Nevertheless, we will discuss your exercises both as exercises and as poems. More often than not, your submissions may succeed in the first of those capacities, but probably not in the second. Revision, for all your submissions, will be a critical step in moving from drafts to actual poems.

Your other assignment this term is to become and competent and enthusiastic reader of poetry. Readings assigned from the required texts are important parts of the course. Early in the semester, you will be assigned one of the books from the list of required texts. For one class period, you will "present" that poet to the rest of the class as that poet's envoy to us. Some research is required for such an activity, but it is more important that you try to approach the poet as a poet: lead us through a compelling poem, talk about the style and sound and texture of the poems, reveal the ideas present there, and tell us what you like and do not like about the poems. In your portfolio at the end of the term, you will include a carefully written "review/sketch" (appreciation, criticism, analysis, discussion, etc. ) of that poet and/or a few of that poet's poems. Models for this prose assignment are readily available in the issue of Parnassus: Poetry in Review you are buying for this course.

THE PORTFOLIO:
A substantial amount of your semester grade for this course will be determined by the portfolio you turn in at the end of the semester. This portfolio will consist of three items:
1) a prose "introduction" to your portfolio. This is your chance to say anything about the course, your performance in it, the poems you did and did not make. A statement of your "aesthetic" is not necessary, but some account of how you organized your poems, how they speak to one another, even an account of how they fit into your oeuvre would be appropriate here.
2) Ten revised poems with their 'original' drafts (the original draft you submitted to the class and the instructor returned to you)
3) Your review/sketch of the poet/book assigned to you at the beginning of the course. This is not merely a written transcript of your presentation; please follow my instructions about how to transform your spoken document into a compelling written document.

Please submit your portfolio typed and assembled carefully in a three-ringed binder. No illustrations or fancy covers please. Portfolios Due: Wednesday, Dec. 16th, 2pm.

COURSE CALENDAR:
Texts/Poems Listed Below are to be read before you arrive in class.

August

27 Course Introduction & Lottery. Assignment for Poem #1: The Private Public Space.

September

1 Exercise & Models of Private Public Space poem. Read Doty, "Theory of Multiplicity" [25] and "Broadway" [80]. Read Spiegelman, "Reading."
3 Submit Poem/Assignment #1. . Read: Philip Larkin: "Wedding-Wind"(45); "Church Going" (58); "Poetry of Departures" (64); "Arrivals, Departures"(74); "Here" (79); "Water" (91); "The Whitsun Weddings" (92); "Talking in Bed" (100); "Ambulances" (104); "Sunny Prestatyn" (106); "An Arundel Tomb" (116). Presentation.

8 Discuss poems.
10 Submit Poem. Read Larkin: "High Windows" (129); "The Old Fools" (131); "Going, Going" (133); "The Card-Players" (135); "This Be the Verse" (142); "Sad Steps" (144); "Homage to Government" (141); "Annus Mirabilis" (146); "The Explosion" (154); "Aubade" (190); "The Mower"(194).

15 Discuss poems. Courtney Zoffness reading. 8pm, Tillotson Room.
17 Submit Poem. Read Spiegelman: "Walking," "Looking," and "Listening." No class.

22 Discuss poems.
24 Submit Poem. Read Spiegelman, "Writing." Read Elizabeth Bishop: "The Map"; "Wading at Wellfleet", "The Weed"; "Sleeping Standing Up," "Roosters"; "The Fish," "The Bight"; "At the Fishhouses"; "Brazil, Jan 1, 1502". Presentation.

29 Discuss poems.
October

1 Submit Spiegelman "-ing" Poem. Read Elizabeth Bishop: "Sestina"; "First Death in Nova Scotia", "Sandpiper", "Filling Station", "In the Waiting Room", "The Moose", "One Art", "The End of March". Presentation.
Willard Spiegelman reading. 8pm. Quigley Auditorium.

6 Discuss poems.
8 Submit Poem. Read: David Baker, Never-Ending Birds. Presentation.

13 Fall Break
15 Discuss poems.

20 Read: David Baker, cont..
21 David Baker reading. 8pm. Quigley Auditorium.
22 Submit Poem.

27 Discuss poems.
Julie Otsuka reading. 8pm, Tillotson Room.
29 Submit Poem. Read: Cesare Pavese: "Introduction," "Landscape (I)", "Displaced People", "Landscape (II)", "Landscape (III)", "Passion for Solitude", "The Billy-Goat God", "Grappa in September", "House Under Construction", " Landscape (V)", "Revolt", "Outside", "Sad Supper", "Landscape (IV)", "August Moon", "Landscape (VI)", "The Widow's Son", "People Who've Been There" , "Agony", "Landscape (VIII), "The Drunk Old Woman", "Landscape (VIII)". Presentation.

November

3 Discuss poems.
5 Submit Pavesesque "Landscape" Poem. Read: Pavese: "Words from Confinement", "Myth", "Paradise Above Roofs", "Morning Star Over Calabria", "Song", "Sad Wine (I)", "The Boy Who Was In Me", "Work's Tiring (I)", " Sad Wine (II)", "Creation", "Other Days", "Poetics", "Sketch of a Landscape", "Sleeping Friend", "Landscape (IX)", "Two", "Two Poems for T.", "I Will Pass Through Piazza di Spagna", "The Cats Will Know".

10 Discuss poems.
12 Submit Poem. Read: Geoffrey Brock, Weighing Light. Presentation.

17 Discuss poems.
19 Submit Poem. Read: Brock, cont.

24 Discuss poems. Submit Poem.
26 Thanksgiving

December

1 Discuss poems. Submit Poem.
3 Discuss poems.

8 Final Reading.

Portfolios Due: Wednesday, Dec. 16th, 2pm.