Comments Template

• 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. All assigned pages have important information, but be absolutely certain that you study carefully any pages I have [bracketed and italicized] for any particular week.

• It is very important that you read and take advantage of the guiding questions provided following almost all of the poems. If you don’t, as the experience of previous students has repeatedly confirmed, you will handicap yourself crucially.

• 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 (indicated by page number), and some are in the photocopy supplemental packet, arranged alphabetically by author (indicated by having no page number).

Week 1 Introduction to the course.

Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” p. 355.

Week 2 Meyer: “Introduction: Reading Imaginative Literature,” pp. 1–7.

Meyer: “Encountering Poetry: A Visual Portfolio,” pp. 8–16.

John Ciardi, “Introduction”; “. . . an ulcer, gentlemen, is an unwritten poem.”

Meyer: Chapter 1: “Reading Poetry,” pp. 19–56 [21, 24–27, 38–39, 42–43, 53–55].

Ellen Kay, “Pathedy of Manners.”

Marge Piercy, “Secretary’s Chant”

Week 3 Meyer: Chapter 2: “Writing About Poetry,” pp. 57–64 [58–62].

Meyer: Chapter 3: “Word Choice, Word Order, and Tone,” pp. 65–104 [68–70, 73, 76–79, 84–86, 90–93].

Thomas Hardy, “Ah, Are You Digging on my Grave?” “The Man He Killed,” “The Ruined Maid,” “A Broken Appointment,” “Neutral Tones,” “Channel Firing,” “Hap,” p. 607.

Margaret Atwood, “Landcrab,” “Siren Song.”

Ben Jonson, “Song: To Celia,” p. 615.

Philip Sidney, “Loving in Truth . . . .” [Sonnet #1, from Astrophel and Stella], p. 626.

Thomas Wyatt, “Song: Go Catch a Falling Star,” “They Flee From Thee.”

Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica.”

Week 4 Meyer: Chapter 4: “Images,” pp. 105–29 [110–13, 115, 117–18, 120–23, 128–29].

Meyer: Chapter 11, “Combining Elements of Poetry,” pp. 287–97.

Meyer: Chapter 27, “Reading and the Writing Process,” pp. 666–700.

Carol Jane Bangs, “Touching Each Other’s Surfaces.”

Keith Douglas, “Vergissmeinnicht.”

Ted Hughes, “Pike.”

Adrienne Rich, “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” “Living in Sin.”

Barton Sutter, “Shoe Shop.”

Oscar Wilde, “Harlot’s House,” “Impression du Matin,” “Hélas!”

Week 5 Meyer: Chapter 5: “Figures of Speech,” pp. 130–52 [132–33, 137–38, 144, 146–48].

Poetic Terms Websites: e.g., http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/Define2.htm and http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/Firsterm.htm; and there are many others on the web that you may find useful.

John Donne, “The Good Morrow,” “The Sun Rising,” “Elegie XIX: To His Mistris Going To Bed”; “Death Be Not Proud,” p. 289; “The Flea,” pp. 605–606.

Matthew Arnold, “Isolation. To Marguerite,” “To Marguerite—Continued.”

D. C. Berry, “On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High.”

Philip Larkin, “Toads.”

Alistair Reid, “Curiosity.”

May Swenson, “Lion.”

David Wagoner, “Being Herded Past the Prison’s Honor Farm.”

——POEM ANALYSIS DUE (on Thursday)——

Sharon Olds, “The Victims,” “Sex Without Love.”

Anne Sexton, “Pain for a Daughter.

Week 6 Meyer: Chapter 7: “Sounds,” pp. 181–210 [185, 194–95, 199–200, 202–203, 207–209].

Rhyme website: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/Define2.htm (study the terms “exact rhyme” in the first column through “alliteration” in the second column).

Ernest Dowson, “To One in Bedlam,” “Dregs,” “A Last Word.”

John Keats, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” p. 505.

Edgar Allan Poe, “Annabel Lee.”

Elvis Presley, “Return to Sender.”

Arthur Symons, “Emmy,” “Nora on the Pavement,” “Prologue: Before the Curtain.”

Week 7 Meyer: Chapter 8: “Patterns of Rhythm,” pp. 211–34 [222–23, 228–33].

Meter Website: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/meters.htm (continued)

Ernest Dowson, “Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam,” “Dumnos Fata Sinunt, Oculos Satiemus Amore,” “Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae,” “Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration,” “Vain Hope,” “Yvonne of Brittany.”

A. E. Housman, “Is My Team Ploughing,” p. 611; “Bredon Hill,” “On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank,” “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff.”

Excerpts from poems by A. E. Housman.

Week 8 G. M. Hopkins, “The Windhover,” p. 611; “Spring,” “Spring and Fall,” “The Sea and the Skylark,” “Hurrahing in Harvest,” p. 610; “Pied Beauty,” p. 611; “(Carrion Comfort),” “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day,” “No Worst, There is None.”

EXAM ON METER (counts as four quizzes).

Week 9 Meyer: Chapter 6: “Symbol, Allegory, and Irony,” pp. 153–63 [154–55, 158–59].

Meyer: “Glossary of Literary Terms,” pp. 709–25.

W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” “The Unknown Citizen.”

Donald Baker, “Formal Application.”

Earle Birney, “Twenty-Third Flight.”

Sterling Brown, “Southern Cop.”

Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death,” pp. 326–27.

Alan Dugan, “Song: I and Thou.”

Ray Durem, “Award.”

Seamus Heaney, “Mid-Term Break.”

M. Carl Holman, “Mr. Z.”

Wallace Stevens, “The Snow Man.”

John Wakeman, “Love in Brooklyn.”

Week 10 Meyer: Chapter 6: “Symbol, Allegory, and Irony,” pp. 164–80 [164– 67, 169, 173–74, 177].

Anthony Hecht, “Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life” (compare with Arnold, “Dover Beach,” p. 110), “More Light! More Light!”

Langston Hughes, “Theme for English B.”

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.”

Dorothy Parker, “A Certain Lady,” “Comment,” “Indian Summer,” “The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk,” “One Perfect Rose,” “Tombstones in the Twilight.”

Edward Arlington Robinson, “The Mill,” “Miniver Cheevy,” “Mr. Flood’s Party.”

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

Week 11 ——SECOND POEM ANALYSIS DUE (on Tuesday)——

Meyer: Chapter 9: “Poetic Forms,” pp. 241–69 [241–43, 247–51, 254, 258–59].

Stanzas Websites: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/stanzas.htm and http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/beginstanzas.htm

Sonnets:

William Shakespeare, “Let Not the Marriage of True Minds,” “When My Love Swears She Was Made of Truth.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “[I being born a woman and distressed],” p. 503; “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed.”

Dramatic Monologues:

Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess,” p. 175; “The Laboratory,” “Porphyria’s Lover,” “Prospice,” “A Woman’s Last Word.”

T. S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi.”

Villanelles:

Ernest Dowson, “Villanelle of Sunset,” “Villanelle of His Lady’s Treasures.”

Martha Collins, “The Story We Know.”

Week 12 Meyer: Chapter 10: “Open Form,” pp. 265–86 [266–69, 272–73, 285–86].

Stanzas Websites: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/stanzas.htm and http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/beginstanzas.htm (continued)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, “Constantly Risking Absurdity.”

Jenny Joseph, “Warning.”

Etheridge Knight, “The warden said to me.”

Denise Levertov, “Losing Track.”

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).

e. e. cummings, “nobody loses all the time,” “Space Being . . . Curved.”

EXAM ON POETIC FORMS (counts as four quizzes).

Week 13 Meyer: Chapter 13: “A Study of Robert Frost,” pp. 349–86.

Robert Frost, “Departmental,” “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Week 14 ——OPTIONAL POEM ANALYSIS DUE——

William Butler Yeats, “Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland,” “The Fascination of What’s Difficult,” “The Folly of Being Comforted,” “No Second Troy,” “Easter 1916,” “He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” “Adam’s Curse,” “Among School Children,” “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop,” “Lapis Lazuli,” “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen,” “Cold Heaven,” “The Second Coming,” p. 638; “Leda and the Swan,” p. 639; “Sailing to Byzantium,” p. 630; “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.”

Katharyn Howd Machan, “Leda’s Sister and the Geese.”

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