|
||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||||||
Welcome to E301/681! I'll use this home page for comments, reminders, and additions or alterations to our schedule. CHANGE IN ATTENDANCE POLICY: Because of risk from the H1N1 flu virus, I'm suspending the limits on absences for this class. Please don't come to class if you're sick! Let me know if you have to miss class, and try to keep up on your comments and assignments through the class website. FINAL PORTFOLIOS due Thursday 12/17 at noon in my mailbox. Please include an SASE if you'd like them returned, or pick them up in my office at the beginning of the spring semester. Class evaluations will be done Thursday, 12/10. On Tuesday 12/8 we meet in W-6-47 for a talk on literary translation with poet and translator Mark Shafer. We'll do a translation exercise, and work further on poems created from the exercise in class 12/10. Individual Conference Schedule--no class meeting week of 11/23 Please bring copies of all 8-10 poems and drafts you've worked on this semester, plus your readings journal. If you're keeping your journal as a computer file, e-mail it to me the day of your conference. Undergrads should have at least 2 additional entries; grad students 4. Monday, 11/23 Tuesday 11/24 Thursday 12/3 2:00--Tyler Edell 12:00--Paulee McCormack 4:00--Frank Morris 2:30--Michael Turner 12:30--Julie Wisnia 1:00--Kevin Farrell 1:30--Tom Aikens 2:00--Tess Johnson 2:30--Amy Marengo John Freeman, acting editor of Granta, will be on campus to meet with students Tuesday 10/13, 3:00 pm, in W-6-94
10/1--Kevin has helpfully offered these HTML commands for posting poems accurately on the website: <b>This will make your contents bold</b> <center>This will center your contents</center> <strike>This will put a line through your text</strike> <u>This will underline your text</u> <i>This will Italicize your contents</i> --Here's a discussion of the "bread/knife" poem I alluded to in class, as well as a video Amy found of Billy Collins reading "Litany": <http://www2.www.umb.edu/english101/view_assignment_detail.php?assignment_id=8917> < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Iq3PbSWZY> Poet Teresa Cader reads Monday 10/5 at noon in W-6-47--please attend if you can! I 9/29: Everyone is expected to hand in work every week. If your poem is scheduled for workshop, you must post it the Friday before class meets. If it's not, please hand it in the first class meeting of the week. I.e., today I should receive poems by Tom, Paulee, Frank, Michael and Julie; we will discuss poems by Tyler, Kevin, Tess, Amy, and Dylan. You're not required to post poems not scheduled for workshop discussion, but you may in order to receive comments from other class members. 9/24: I've added the Yusef Komunyakaa poems Amy e-mailed to the Resources section (scroll to the end). You can find other poems and a biography of the poet at the Academy of American Poets website <www.poetry.org> 9/17: Here are excerpts from your statements of aesthetics: STATEMENTS OF AESTHETICS
A poem…is an expressed feeling. Not as in “I’m happy,” but a rush of sights and sounds, details that evoke happy in the mind, create a common feeling that allows the poet and the reader a shared moment.
Allen Ginsberg operated under the mantra, “first thought best thought.” I think this statement is true to the extent that everything a poet says should sound fresh and new even after the hundredth draft of a poem has been completed.
I get excited coming across an unexpected string of sounds. I am astounded when subtle sensations or situations (which when pieced together make up the visceral whole of the experience) that are rarely consciously noticed, let alone expressed in words, suddenly appear in the next stanza.
…the best poetry adheres to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s treatise on fine art, cinema, and literature: “If art is not a medication for society, it is a poison.” …I believe poetry must articulate something subversive—that is, on some level, it has to challenge us.
By reading poetry that challenges forms or regularity…, we become our own authors of meaning…, and, if we retain those thoughts, carry them into discourse with others and in some way affect situations with “new metaphors.” What is politics and love other than a series of metaphors?
A good poem not only conveys its message aesthetically through the use of literary devices, but also makes…reader[s] think and interpret for themselves. If the poem spells everything out for the reader[s], they might as well read a good book instead.
…I know a good poem when I hate the poet and the poems. When I first read Wallace Stevens I packaged my jealousy into hatred. When reading good poetry I need to preserve the boundaries of myself just as they are dissipating. I have now come to my senses.
A great poem is one that, even if the reader has never experienced anything like what the poet is writing about, he is still able to feel something of the poet’s emotion…. [W]hat makes up a quality poem is honesty and wordplay. Good is the couplet that leaves you awestruck, the description that brings a moment to life..., the line that lingers in your mind long after you have put the poem down, begging you, every so often, to go back and read it again. A poem can and should take you somewhere, whether it is to an emotion, a journey, a memory, a person, etc. It is the responsibility of the poet to do so by showing the reader what they have seen, developing a picture without actually spelling it out. 9/17: For a fascinating look at how poets respond to other poems, and to view their composition strategies in real time, go to <http://www.quickmuse.com/archive/> If you would like to subscribe to Dan Bouchard's list serv of poetry readings in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, contact him at For 9/15: 1-2 page statement of aesthetics explaining what you believe makes a good poem DUE. I'll post excerpts from your statements here. Discussion of poems by Tyler, Kevin, Tess, Amy and Dylan begins. Link to Massachusetts Poetry Festival: www.masspoetry.org
|
||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
