Office: TUR4332 Phone: 352-392-6650 x259 Email: pcraddoc@english.ufl.edu
Office hours: W 4th-5th period and any other time by appointment.
Purpose of the Course:
I respectfully but earnestly request that all students read the following statement carefully, and that if their purposes in signing up for the course do not match these purposes, they drop it and choose a course more appropriate for their needs. Please do not take this course if you hate and resent poetry, just because it meets at a convenient hour or fills a requirement. Thank you.
We will study the ways in which poetry works--and by poetry, we will mean not just anything that has rhyme or rhythm, but specifically the results of people trying to use all the powers of language simultaneously--its ability to appeal to our intelligence, our imagination, and our senses. In other words, students will learn the language and craft of the practicing poet, though this course will not focus on the writing of their own poems. Note: the term for what we will be studying is "close reading"; it is not a literary theory (though it is a necessary skill for the practice of virtually any literary theory).
Our focus will be on reading some of that large body of poems in English, from the twelfth century to the twenty-first, that have been, or might be, set to music--"lyric" poetry in its most literal sense. Students do not have to be musicians to take this class, but they will find it helpful if they enjoy music, because we will often find ourselves listening to these poems in their musical settings. But we will also study poems that are, like the title Yeats gave to one of his volumes of poems, "Words for Music--Perhaps."
Most lyric poems fall into one of three broad classes: songs (and sonnets)--short, intense expressions of reaction to an emotional experience or of a particular state of mind and heart; ballads--story poems told in the form of reports of intense episodes at key moments in the story; and odes (or elegies, or meditations, or "conversation poems")--longer poems that do not tell a story, but rather work through some intense emotional crisis or philosophical issue before the eyes, as it were, of the reader. Intensity, then, will be the keynote of our study.
While we will compare and contrast poems from different periods, in these different varieties, that deal with universal topics such as love, loss, commitment, and betrayal, we will not attempt to establish a history of the lyric poem. Rather, our emphasis will be primarily on what the poems of the past have to offer us who live, feel, and sing in the present day, and to a secondary extent on the question of which poems of the present may have such value for future readers.
BOOKS AND SUPPLIES NEEDED
The books required for this course are available at Goerings' Textbook Branch, between17th and 18th street on NW 1st Avenue--also known as "Books and Bagels." They are
Many materials for this course will be posted on or linked to its Internet site, which is this syllabus. Its address is http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/poesyl01su.htm.
Grades in this course will be based on the following:
1. 5% Class attendance and participation. You will receive 1 point for every class you attend. You will lose 1 point for every unexcused absence. (To be credited with attendance, you will need to turn in a 3 x 5 card with your name, the name of your discussion group, and the date on it. You may earn additional "performance" points by writing a comment or question on the card that shows you have been thinking about the assigned reading. For this portion of this course, grades are as follows: under 15 points=F; 16 = D; 17=D+; 18-19=C, 20-21=C+, 22-23=B, 24=B+, 25=A. Points above 25 may be used to improve your grade in other aspects of the course. In no case, however, will extra credit points beyond those used for class performance raise your grade more than one level (B to B+, or C+ to B, for example)
2. 5% Handmade Handbook. You are to make your own handbook of terms used in analyzing poems and songs, with definitions and examples. You can copy the definitions, or portions of them, from other sources, but the idea is to make sure that you are "getting it" by putting material in your own words and finding or making your own examples. This will be handed in for credit at the time of the quiz on technical terms; obviously completing it and reviewing it is a great way to study for the quiz. You may show it to me at any time before or after that to make sure you are on the right track, or to earn extra credit for special sections, e.g. sections about types of songs and poems. For now, when you learn a new term or come across one you already know that is important in the study of poems, put it in your handbook. These handbooks will be graded on a 10-point scale, with completeness, correctness, organization, and aptness of examples as criteria for grading. But mainly they will help you remember what you learn.
3. 10% Quiz :on technical terms
4. 20% Workshop Portfolios--analytical exercises and other activities
5. 30% interpretative/creative paper--see "Paper Topics"
6. 30% Final: in-class essay analyzing a poem
EXTRA CREDIT: Extra points to make up deficiencies in points
for attendance, portfolios, and quiz may be earned in several ways, of
which the easiest (by far) is to add a comment or question to your attendance
card that reveals that you have thought about the assignment for the day.
Such comments can earn 1 point of extra credit each. Other ways:
memorize and recite to me a poem of your choice (must be 12-20 lines long)
(3-5 points); doing a mini-paper (see paper topics), i.e., a brief or trial
version of one of the topics (3-5 points).
Paper Topics:
IMPORTANT: Before even beginning to write your paper, read Norton Introduction pp. A28-A32. While writing it, consult pp. A33-A48.
(1) Choose two or more poems by the same poet, OR in the same form, OR dealing with the same subject, to compare and contrast. At least one of the chosen poems must come from one of our textbooks, though it need not have been assigned reading. Your job is not to see where the poet(s) went wrong, or to praise his, her, or their wonderful work in vague generalities, but to help another reader appreciate exactly what the poet says and how he or she says it. You might think of yourself as answering the question, how and why do these poems differ from a simple prose summary of their content. If it helps, you may specify your audience-are you telling your "significant other" about these poems? Your mom? Your roommate? Your kid brother? Remember, to love something you must understand it, and to understand it, you must love it. This paper should be approximately 1700-2500 words long. (A typed or word-processed page typically contains 250-300 words.)
(2) Select or write a poem and make it into a song. If you can't
write music, sing the song onto a tape and/or for me and/or for the class.
If you can write music, it would still be nice to sing the song for the
class. Write a 1000-word interpretative analysis of the words
that explains and justifies the musical choices you have made. NOTE: the
grade will be based mostly on this analysis, because grading creative projects
is very subjective.
(3) Find a musical setting of one of the poems in our books, or of another poem previously approved by me, and compare and contrast the relationship beween the poem and the music in that example and in one other, which may be either another setting of the same poem, or a song--that is, a work in which poem and music were written more or less at the same time, though not necessarily by the same people--which has a closely similar subject and tone. In other words, interpret and compare two songs, at least one of which is based on a poem in one of our books.
SCHEDULE (note that you are to read or do the work assigned BEFORE the class meeting at which it is to be discussed, unless otherwise instructed)
NOTE: You are responsible for reading certain specific poems for any class in which you are referred to the "Poemlist." NI stands for "The Norton Introduction to Poetry." TW stands for "Trouble the Water." Assignments in "Many Worlds" are available on line, as are "Portfolio" instructions.
MAY
14 Introduction: poems and music; getting started with poems. This
week, as you read the assigned poems, try this. Pick one or more of the
poems for the following purposes: (1) to retell the story in your own words
or (2) to ask about, because you don't feel sure you know what happened
or (3) to sing, bring in a recording of, or explain why it would be hard
to make a song of.
15 Kowit, "A Few Words," pp. iii-vi., and pp. 8-16. Read also NI,
A6-A8 (at the end of the book). Pick out the key sentences in the two introductions.
Read also the poem on p. 6 in Kowit. Do Portfolio
exercise
1, "Getting the 'Story'".
16 Read Kowit, 38-46, NI A11-A18, Many Worlds excerpt 1, "Imagery."
Read Poemlist
NI
set
1 and TW,set 1.
17 Portfolio exercise 2,"What Spoils a Poem?" Kowit 48-52, NI
A9-A10.
18 Kowit 64-76. Many Worlds "Diction"
Poemlist NI poem
set 2.
21 Portfolio 3 "Varieties of Direct Imagery"
22 Poemlist
NI set 3.
23 Kowit 79-84. PoemlistTW
poem set 2
24 Portfolio 4, "Figures of Speech" (double portfolio)
25 Many Worlds "Rhyme",
Kowit 56-61 Poemlist NI set 4
28 MEMORIAL DAY HOLIDAY
29 Poemlist TW set 3 Portfolio 5, "Sound and Sense"
30 Poemlist NI Set 5
31 Many Worlds "Rhythm";
Kowit 146-152 (and see 165-68)
JUNE
1 Portfolio 6 "Technicalities of Rhythm"
4 Portfolio 7, "Song and Story"
5 PAPER DUE
6 Kowit 137-44; PoemlistNI
set 6
7 Many Worlds "Structure" Kowit 169-78
8 Kowit 194-203 (note particularly p. 198). Portfolio 8, "Heart-felt
Songs" Class
choices
11 Kowit 154-64; review for quiz
12 Quiz; turn in Handbooks
13 Poemlist TW set 4; Portfolio 9, "Issues of Order"*
14 Many Worlds "Tone" Kowit 182-90;NI set 7
15 Poemlist NI set 8; Portfolio 10, "Orchestrating Tone"
18 Kowit 88-92; 225-41
19 Portfolio 11, "Using a Form: the Sonnet" Poemlist NI and TW set
1
20 Portfolio 12, "Using a Form: the Elegy" Poemlist
NI
and TW set 2
21 Kowit 215-22
22 FINAL In-class Essay