Required Texts (available only at Goering’s Book Store-Bageland and, where indicated, Orange and Blue Textbooks)

Michael Meyer, Poetry: An Introduction, 4th edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s)
Optional:  Diana Hacker, ed., A Pocket Style Manual, 4th Edition (St. Martin’s)
Photocopy supplement (available only at Orange and Blue Textbooks)
 

Schedule

IMPORTANT NOTE: You are required to read all the poems contained within the pages of the assigned chapters in the textbook Poetry: An Introduction, by Michael Meyer.  Additional assigned poems (beyond those in the assigned chapters) are listed by name on this syllabus; some can be found elsewhere in the textbook Poetry, and some are in the photocopy supplemental packet, arranged alphabetically by author.  Poems on the syllabus that are not accompanied by page numbers are in the photocopy supplement. 

Hint:  If you want to know a little about tyhe life of a poet, there is a big section in the back of the Meyer textbook, “Brief Biographies of Selected Poets.”  Furthermore, there are also more elaborate introductions to the following poets: Emily Dickinson (pp. 305–13), Robert Frost (pp. 350–57), and Langston Hughes (pp. 388–95).

Week 1
Introduction to the course.

Meyer:  “Introduction: Reading Imaginative Literature,” pp. 1–5.
Meyer:  “Encountering Poetry: A Visual Portfolio,” pp. 6–19.
John Ciardi, “Introduction,” “. . . an ulcer, gentlemen, is an unwritten poem.”
Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” p. 355.
 

Week 2
Meyer:  Chapter One, “Reading Poetry,” pp. 23–60.
Ben Jonson, “Song: To Celia,” p. 504.
Ellen Kay, “Pathedy of Manners.”
Archibald MacLeishy, “Ars Poetica.”

Meyer:  Chapter Two, “Writing About Poetry,” pp. 61–68.
John Donne, “The Sun Rising,” “Elegie XIX: To His Mistris Going To Bed”; “The Flea,” p.493.

Week 3
Meyer: Chapter Three, “Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone,” pp. 69–106.
Martha Collins, “The Story We Know.” 
Excerpts from poems by A. E. Housman.
Housman, “Is My Team Ploughing,” p. 501; “Bredon Hill,” “On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank,” “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff.”

Sharon Olds, “The Victims.”
William Shakespeare, “Let Not the Marriage of True Minds”; “When My Love Swears She Was Made of Truth.”
John Wakeman, “Love in Brooklyn.”


Week 4
Meyer: Chapter Seven, “Sounds,” pp. 189–219.
Rhyme website: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/Define2.htm (study the terms “exact rhyme” in the first column through “alliteration” in the second column).
Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee,” “The Raven.”
Elvis Presley, “Return to Sender.”
Edward Arlington Robinson, “The Mill,” “Miniver Cheevy,” “Mr. Flood’s Party.”         

Dylan Thomas, “The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” “The Hunchback in the Park” (click http://www.undermilkwood.net/poetry_thehunchback.html to hear Thomas read the poem).


Week 5
Meyer: Chapter Eight, “Patterns of Rhythm,” pp. 220–40.
Meter Website: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/meters.htm

QUIZ ON METER (counts as four quizzes).
 

Week 6
Meyer: Chapter 11, “Combining Elements of Poetry,” pp. 291–301.
Meyer: Chapter 22, “Reading and Writing,” pp. 626–38.
Ernest Dowson, “Dregs,” “Dumnos Fata Sinunt, Oculos Satiemus Amore,” “A Last Word,” “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae,” “Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration,” “To One in Bedlam,” “Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam,” “Vain Hope,” “Yvonne of Brittany.”
——POEM ANALYSIS DUE——

John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” p. 505.
Dorothy Parker, “A Certain Lady,” “Comment,” “Indian Summer,” “The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk,” “One Perfect Rose,” “Tombstones in the Twilight.”
Arthur Symons, “Emmy,” “Epilogue: Credo,” “Nora on the Pavement,” “Prologue: Before the Curtain,” “Prologue: In the Stalls,” “To a Dancer.”

Week 7
Meyer: Chapter Four, “Images,” pp. 107–32.
Carol Jean Bangs, “Touching Each Other’s Surfaces.”
Keith Douglas, “Vergissmeinnicht.”
Wilfred Owen, “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” “Disabled.”   
Adrienne Rich, “Living in Sin,” p. 520.
Barton Sutter, “Shoe Shop.”

Ted Hughes, “Pike.”
Anne Sexton, “Pain for a Daughter.
Philip Sidney, “Loving in Truth . . . .” [Sonnet #1, from Astrophel and Stella], pp. 523–24.
Oscar Wilde, “Harlot’s House,” “Hélas! ” “Impression du Matin.”

John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud,” p. 293; “The Good Morrow.”
Philip Larkin, “Toads.”  
Alistair Reid, “Curiosity.” 
May Swenson, “Lion.”


Week 9
Meyer: Chapter 6, “Symbol, Allegory, and Irony,” pp. 156–61.
Meyer: “Glossary of Literary Terms,” pp. 709–25.
Matthew Arnold, “Isolation. To Marguerite,” “To Marguerite—Continued.”   
Margaret Atwood, “Siren Song.”      
W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” “The Unknown Citizen.” 
Earle Birney, “Twenty-Third Flight.”
Maxine Kumin, “Woodchucks.”
Sally Mitchell, “From the Journals of the Frog Prince.”
Marge Piercy, “Barbie Doll,” “September Afternoon at Four O’Clock,” “A Story Wet As Tears,” “To Have Without Holding,” “A Work of Artifice.”          
Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man.”

QUIZ ON FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE, Chapters 1–8 (counts as four quizzes).

Week 10
Meyer: Chapter 9: “Poetic Forms,” pp. 241–69.
Stanzas Websites: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/stanzas.htm and http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/beginstanzas.htm
Ernest Dowson, “Villanelle of Sunset,” “Villanelle of His Lady’s Treasures.”
Anthony Hecht, “Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life,” p. 497 (compare with Arnold, “Dover Beach,” p. 113), “More Light! More Light!”
G. M. Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur,” p. 200; “The Windhover,” p. 501; “(Carrion Comfort),” “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day,” “No Worst, There is None,” “The Sea and the Skylark,” “Spring.”
M. Carl Holman, “Mr. Z,”  p. 499.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “[I being born a woman and distressed],” “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed.”


Week 11
Meyer: Chapter 10: “Open Form,” pp. 270–90.
Stanzas Websites: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/stanzas.htm and http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/beginstanzas.htm
e. e. cummings, “nobody loses all the time,” “Space Being . . . Curved.”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Constantly Risking Absurdity.”
Jenny Joseph, “Warning.”
Etheridge Knight, “The warden said to me.”
——SECOND POEM ANALYSIS DUE——  

QUIZ ON POETIC FORMS (counts as four quizzes).

Week 12
Donald Baker, “Formal Application.”
Sterling Brown, “Southern Cop.”
Ray Durem, “Award.”
Denise Levertov, “Losing Track.”
William Stafford, “Traveling Through the Dark.”
Thomas Hardy, “Ah, Are You Digging on my Grave?” “A Broken Appointment,” “Channel Firing,” “The Man He Killed,” “Neutral Tones.”

Robert Frost, “Birches,” p. 365; “Out, Out—,” p. 368; “Departmental,.” “The Woodpile.”
   

Week 13
William Butler Yeats, “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,” p. 538; “Adam’s Curse,” “Among School Children,” “Cold Heaven,” “The Fascination of What’s Difficult,” “The Folly of Being Comforted,” “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” “Lake Isle of Innisfree,”  “The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland,” “No Second Troy.”

W. B. Yeats, “Leda and the Swan,” p. 539; “Sailing to Byzantium,” p. 540; “The Second Coming,” p. 541; “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” “Easter 1916” “Lapis Lazuli,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen.”
Katharyn Howd Machan, “Leda’s Sister and the Geese.” 
 

T. S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi.”
——OPTIONAL  POEM  ANALYSIS  DUE——
 

Week 15
QUIZ ON POETIC FORMS AND TERMS (counts as six quizzes)