Office: TUR4332 Phone: 352-392-6650 x259 Email: pcraddoc@english.ufl.edu
Office hours: TW 11-12:30 a. m., 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.
Our focus will be on reading some of that large body of poems in English, from the twelfth century almost 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 its Internet site, which is this syllabus. Its address is http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pcraddoc/susyl00.htm.
Grades in this course will be based on the following:
1. 10% Class attendance and participation. Everyone starts with 72 points. Every class meeting attended counts one point for you; every unexcused absence counts three points against you. Lateness may count as a partial absence. Not bringing the necessary equipment, including the appropriate books, counts as a partial absence. The first class meeting doesn't count against anyone. In letter grade terms, 60-64 = D, 65-69 = D+, etc. 90 and above is an A. There are 28 class meetings in Summer B, not counting the holidays, i.e., 27 after the first one.
2. 20% Quiz :on technical terms
3. 20% Workshop Portfolios--analytical exercises and other activities as explained in the packet.
4. 25% interpretative/creative paper--see "Paper Topics"
5. 25% 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:
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) (A) 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.
OR
(B) 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."
July 3 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.
July 4 HOLIDAY
July 5 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 and (check Poemlist)NI
set
1 and TW,set 1. Do Portfolio
exercise
1, "Getting the 'Story'".
July 6 Read Kowit, 38-46, NI A11-A18, Many Worlds excerpt 1,
"Imagery."
Poemlist NI poem
set 2.
July 7 Portfolio exercise 2,"What Spoils a Poem?" Kowit 48-52, NI
A9-A10.
July 10 Kowit 64-76. Many Worlds "Diction"
July 11 PoemlistNI
set 3. Portfolio 3 "Varieties of Direct Imagery"
July 12 Kowit 79-84. PoemlistTW
poem set 2
July 13 Portfolio 4, "Figures of Speech" (double portfolio)
July 14 Guest--Robert Ray of "The Vulgar Boatmen" group
July 17 Many Worlds "Rhyme",
Kowit 56-61 Poemlist NI set 4
July 18 Poemlist TW set 3 Portfolio 5, "Sound and Sense" (double
portfolio; work on in class, turn in on Wednesday)
July 19 Poemlist NI Set 5
July 20 Kowit 79-84 Portfolio 6, "Song and Story"
July 21 Many Worlds "Rhythm";
Kowit 146-152 (and see 165-68)
July 24 PAPER DUE Guest
July 25 Kowit 137-44; Poemlist
NI set 6
July 26 Portfolio 7 (double portfolio) "Technicalities of Rhythm"
Work on in class, turn in on Thursday
July 27 Many Worlds "Structure" Kowit 169-78
July 28 "Voices and Visions" video
July 31 Kowit 154-64; review for quiz
August 1 Quiz
August 2 Poemlist TW set 4; Portfolio 8, "Issues of Order"*
August 3 Many Worlds "Tone" Kowit 182-90;NA set 7
August 4 Kowit 194-203 (note particularly p. 198). Portfolio
9, "Heart-felt Songs"
August 7 Poemlist NI set 8; Portfolio 10, "Orchestrating Tone"
August 8 Kowit 88-92; 225-41
August 9 Portfolio 11, "Using a Form: the Sonnet" Poemlist NI and
TW set 1
August 10 Portfolio 12, "Using a Form: the Elegy" Poemlist
NI
and TW set 2; Kowit 215-22
August 11 FINAL In-class Essay