A survey of modern American poetry emphasizing the period since World War II and including such poets as Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Frank O’Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Sexton, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg. Covers the techniques and strategies American poets developed to write powerfully of the vast social and cultural changes affecting modern Americans’ lives.
Goals, Topics, and Objectives
- The nineteenth-century emergence of a distinctive American poetic tradition departing from nineteenth-century British poetry
- The centrality of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the early American poetic tradition
- American poets’ encounters with nineteenth-century European poets
- American poets’ encounters with Asian poetic traditions
- (In connection with #s 3 and 4 above:) The critical role of translations from foreign languages in the enrichment of the American poetic tradition
- Harriet Monroe, H. D., Amy Lowell and the Imagist movement
- Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, rivals and collaborators
- Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay and the power of traditional forms
- W. C. Williams and a new poetic idiom based on American speech
- Wallace Stevens and the persistence of transcendence
- Early twentieth-century American poetry and modern painting
- The Harlem Renaissance; poetry and American roots music
- Elizabeth Bishop and the cosmopolitan movement
- Frank O’Hara and the New York School taking shape in the 50's; American pop culture; American painting and American poets
- The Beat Generation
- Charles Olson and projective verse
- The West Coast poets of the Vietnam War era; the poetry of political struggle
Students should be able to accomplish the following:
- Formulate an interpretive thesis (as opposed to one which merely reports on something factual about a poetic text).
- Compose an essay which either
- analyzes a poetic text, focusing on literary elements appropriate in printed discussions of poetry, such as form, genre, imagery, color, figurative language, rhythm, diction, etc.; or
- comments on the habitual themes and/or techniques of a given poet, as evidenced in that poet’s works (as opposed to an essay which primarily reports factual information about the poet’s biography); or
- analyzes more than one poetic text by comparing and contrasting works by more than one poet of the modern American poet tradition.
- Employ one or more appropriate rhetorical modes (comparison/contrast, cause/effect, definition, classification, etc.) in developing a written literary analysis.
- Identify some of the following key literary terms that are essential to an introductory-level understanding of poetry in general and modern American poetry in particular: line, stanza, rhymes, free verse, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, consonance, figurative language, diction, forms (e.g., sonnet, ballad, ode, etc.), imagery, and allusion.
- Identify features in a given text that would commonly be considered typical of modern American poetry. These features might include such things as non-narrative structure, experiments in form and diction, taboo and popular culture subjects, identification with cultural or ethnic outsiders, polemical and/or ironic tone; in general, any issues of style, technique, or practice discussed and/or debated in relation to American poetry.
- Evaluate a few of the key ways American poets attempted to incorporate modern American themes, experiences, and social realities (including speech patterns) into compelling and evocative poetry.
- Explain the crucial importance and/or distinctive achievement of some of the following key writers of modern American poetry: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, W. C. Williams, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Charles Olson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Frank O’Hara, Imamu Amiri Baraka, and Allen Ginsberg.
- Discuss similarities of technique and interest between modern American poets of different generations, and/or of the same poetic orientation, such as the Imagist poets, the Beat Generation, and the New York School.
- Discuss the distinctiveness of poetic utterances in relation to other genres of literary expression, such as fiction, polemic, journalism, memoir, and so on.
(Note: Objectives #1 and #2 above will be used to measure students’ critical thinking for General Education Outcome #4.)
Note that a grade of C- is not transferrable and is not accepted by some programs at HFC
Assessment and Requirements
General: Students will write a minimum of 2,000 words of formal literary analysis.
Specific:
- Students will write at least one out-of-class essay of literary analysis that is at least 1,200 words in length.
- Students will take at least one written exam which requires them to analyze literature; whether a single essay or multiple shorter responses, this expository component will count for at least half of the credit for that exam.
**Required:
- Students will read substantial and representative selections from the works of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, W. C. Williams, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Imamu Amiri Baraka, and others.
- Students will read a substantial and representative selection of poetic texts that reflect the techniques and considerations typical of modern American poetry: formal patterns, musical elements (color and rhythm), diction and tone, imagery and allusions.
- Students will regularly engage in thoughtful discussions of assigned readings.
- Students will study (through assigned readings and/or classroom discussions) the cultural contexts from which the poetry emerges.
- Students will study concepts that are essential to an introductory-level understanding of modern American poetry, such as line, stanza, rhymes, free verse, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, consonance, figurative language, diction, forms (e.g., sonnet, ballad, ode, etc.), imagery, and allusion.
Recommended:
- Students should learn appropriate biographical information about assigned poets when such information could be helpful in understanding the poetry.
- Students should take quizzes and/or write commentaries on assigned readings.
- Students should keep a journal in which they record their responses to assigned readings and class discussions.
- Students should learn to place the major assigned poets and texts on an historical time line.
- Students should satisfactorily read at least one poem aloud, either in class or in the instructor’s office.
Outcomes
- Humanities and Fine Arts
- Humanities
- Category 5: Humanities and Fine Arts