Sheesh.  That's a lot of books.

It is, no doubt about it.  However, we've got fifteen weeks and in fifteen weeks we can accomplish a lot. 

But I don't know a lot of those poets.

I'm betting that's true.  When I was conceiving this class, I thought about doing a Modern British Poetry course, since that's a specialty of mine.  I even thought about doing a Modern American course, or a combination course.  However, since I just finished editing The Routledge Who's Who in Twentieth-Century World Poetry, it just seemed to make sense to me to try to teach a bit of what I learned while doing the book.  Thus I want to look not only at some canonical British and American poets, but also at some canonical ones from outside the English-language tradition.  These are poets who are important and even influential on English language writers; I thought by putting them side-by-side we might see some interesting developments in both worldviews and poetic reaction to the modern world.

But what do you mean by "modern" there?

The concept of "modernity" is nothing very new.  People in the first century B.C.E. were complaining about "modern" conceptions which contradicted their accepted ways of doing things.  Even those eighteenth century guys like Swift and Johnson were taking sides in the Battle of the Ancients and Moderns, where the Ancients wanted to look to classical art and literature while the Moderns wanted to look to the incipient industrial revolution and global trade for their inspiration.  So "modern" is a term that's been around a long time.

Still, for this course, it's got a pretty specific use.  We literary types talk about "modern" poetry as anything written from the fin-de-siecle until about thirty years ago, when we begin to label things "contemporary."  Modern in this case means a period encapsulating many of the great changes that occurred during the last century, including the two world wars, the Cold War, the rise of the Soviet Union and the communist world, America's industrial rise and a whole mess of others.  Likewise, it encapsulates many of the great poetic and intellectual movements of the century (such as modernism and psychoanalysis). 

For us, the first understanding of "the modern" is that it attempts to replace what it sees as outmoded and, in the process, posits itself as the most advanced of whatever it is -- political theory, poetic language, economic reality.  What we're going to chart in various ways in this class is how "modern poetry" attempted to displace what came before it and then kept rewriting even its own self in order to react to, and often influence, the changing world around it.

Phew.  That was a big answer to a small question.

When you're talking about "the modern" nothing is small. 

But what's the course going to be like?

Since I'm not sure what your backgrounds are, and because I know how difficult modern poetry can be, we're going to start with a couple of weeks just to hone your reading skills.  We'll work through various elements -- and schools -- of poetry so that we've got some common skills before hitting the books.

Then we're going to read the texts chronologically, by and large.  I am going to shift some things around so that you can see how poets were using what they learned from their peers, but mostly we're going to move through almost one hundred years of poetry via the ten texts we're reading. 

As we're doing so, I want you to begin to ask yourself a series of questions:

Those are some pretty big questions.

Yes, they are.  You're going to have to be persistent -- and patient -- in asking and answering them.  The poetry of this past century is not easy and so you're going to have to work, constantly, to generate meaning from them and for yourself.

It's not easy.  But it's very rewarding, intellectual work of the highest degree.

While we're on "intellectual work," what will the work of this class actually be?

There will be three essays for this class.  The first will be a close reading, an exercise which will be familiar to most of you, particularly those of you who've taken me before. (The poem, however, won't be.)  The second will be a 4-5 page essay dealing with one poet or poem, while the last will be a 5-7 page essay dealing with any topic of your choice, as long as it is based, at least partially, in text.  All essays must conform to MLA format (a quick summary of key elements can be found through the Style Sheet link at the top of this page.)  Though there will be no mid-term in this course, there will be a final, likely an essay exam.  All of the essays and the exam will be weighted equally, at twenty percent of your grade.

Each of you, in pairs, will be responsible for leading the initial discussion on the poets in this class.  This means that you must prep your poet's biography and be prepared to talk about significant poems, or elements in the poems.  (Handouts are not necessary, but, if done well, are always helpful.) I will lead on Yeats; you will handle all the others, with me jumping in as necessary.  These discussion-leadings will count as a full essay grade in this course (and thus be worth one-fifth of your grade).

And there's one more thing:

Plagiarism

This is really simple:  if you copy someone else's direct words or exact ideas -- intentionally or not -- without giving them credit you fail the class.  Universities and colleges are built upon the notion that ideas matter; if you plagiarize someone else's ideas, you're denying that fundamental tenet. There will be zero tolerance for plagiarism in my courses.  If you do it, you fail the class, period.  (Please see also "Academic Dishonesty" on page 26 of the college's 2000-01 catalog and p. 95 ff. of Buscemi's The Basics.)

Okay, tough guy, so what's the schedule look like?

Glad you asked.  I'll be posting individual reading assignments as they present themselves.