English 62: Twentieth Century Poetry (but not from the U.S.)
Charles Bernstein (charles.bernstein @ english.upenn.edu)

Spring 2009: Weds., 6-9pm


Introduction
Requirements
Wreading listserve archive
posts to wreading@mailman.ssc.upenn.edu

Note: English 88 — 20th Century American Poetry — is the companion course to English 62.

This syllabus is a work in progress and subject to change.

SPRING BREAK

Recommended Poetry Reading and  Talk :
Tues., 3/17, 6pm, KHW, Hank Lazer (I will introduce)

Required Books (at Penn Book Center)
Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, eds., Poems for the Millennium Vols 1 and 2
Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp by Pierre Cabanne, tr. Ron Padgett
Recommended:
Modernisms: A Literary Guide by Peter Nicholls

1. (Jan. 14) Introduction & Yeats
Because we meet only once per week, I want to start in on the discussion of Yeats in the first meeting. Also try to do the Poem Profiler self-assessment.
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939): "A Vision" and "The Second Coming" in PM1;
___ "Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (via class e-library: password required); or on e-mule: "Innisfree," "Sailing," "Second " ; plus "The Song of Wandering Aengus "
Audio: three mp3 files:
(1)Yeats reading "Lake Isle of Innisfree," (2) his comments on this poem, and (3) his 1936 comments "On Modern Poetry"
note: for these sound files use this link before Jan. 14 (and use password provided in welcome email)
Alt.: Poetry Archive audio/text of "Innisfree"
Extenstion (optional): Hamilton Camp's 1964 folk setting of the poem
Auden, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"
Further information on Yeats, including biography and complete poems, is available from LION via library e-recources.
•Poem Profiler self-test: fill out the profiler in the abstract, to reflect your own preferences. If you have a question about the meaning of one of the terms, post it to the blog. If you like: post your self-test to the blog.
•Use the profiler on Yeats
•What is Yeats's problem with modern poetry? (Based on the 1936 sound recording.)
• What does the Lake Isle of Innisfree symbolize?
• Describe Yeats's voice.
•What qualities do you find distinctive to the recording (that you did not necessarily find in the text)?

class lecture; modernist time line

2. (Jan. 21) French Modernisms
2, part one: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Mallarmé
          
Charles Baudelaire, "À une Mendiante Rousse" (1845-6), "La Muse Vénale" (1857): these two poems will be discussed in class but read also selections in in PM1.
Stéphan Mallarmé (1842-1898), Un coup de dés will also be discussed in class:
_____in PM1 (both selections)
_____ "Crisis in Poetry" (full essasy) -- OR-- just read the excerpt.
Arthur Rimbaud in PM1 [proably will not be discussed in class].
Extensions (optional):
Baudelaire: see portrait of "La petite mendiante rousse" by Emile Roy.
______  "Be Always Drunken" tr. Arthur Symmons (cf.: O'Neill quotes in Long Day's Journey into Night), "Be Drunken" tr. Bernstein
_______ Further translations of the poem at Fleursdumal.org and check links to complete
_______ . "To the reader" ["Hypocrite lecteur, -- mon semblable, -- mon frére"]
______. Essays: Salon of 1959 & Painter of Modern Life (1863)
_______. French texts
_____, "À une Mendiante Rousse" (tr. lined-up side by side)
Mallarmé. Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard (web versions French & English)
"Salut" -- in four versions; English translations
Valéry on Mallarmé via Rasula
Mallarmé & Baudelaire: translations of Poe's "Raven"; Mallarmé's book  was done in collabortation with Manet.
Rimbaud, A Season in  Hell (bilingual)
•Use Poem Profiler on Mallarmé, Rimbaud, and Baudelaire
•What is Baudelaire's attitude toward the "muse venal" (the venal must) and to the "mendiante rousse" (redhaired beggar)? Does he objectify them, is he sympathetic, empathetic? In what way are these poem "modern" (subject matter? form? attitude?) Which translations do you like best, least & why?
•Contrast Yeats and Mallarmé and Baudelaire. Based on your poem profiling self-test, what does this tell you about your preferences?
•What for Mallarme is "pure poetry"? What is the "crisis" for poetry? In Coup de dés: what is the importance of the white space and of the layout? How would the poem be different if it was laid out in traditional stanzaic form (try that out to see)?
Wreading:
•Why does Eugene O'Neill quote Baudelaire and Dowson [see next week's readings] in the last act of Long Day's Journey into Night?
Try a homophonic translation of Un Coup dés (French version linked above) (see experiments list #2). Comment on the result.

2, part two: Part One Apollinaire & Cendrars
Apollinaire

Blaise Cendrars, "Prose of the Transiberian" in PM1; see image of work (painting by Sonia Delaunay) at Penn Library: overview, detail, 2d detail. Alternative web-tr by Ekaterina Likhtik
Apollinaire [Guillelmus (or Wilhelm) Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky] (1880-1918), "Zone" (1912) in PM1; note: "Zone" in French
____ Alcools (1913): "Le Pont Mirabeau" (& sound files), "Clotilde," & "Annie"
____Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War 1913-1916 (1918): ."Ombre", "Horse Calligramme" in PM1; "La Colombe Poignardée et le jet d’eauat" & "Lettre Ocean"; see others at UBU, but esp. "Il Pleut" (It Rains).
Apollinaire on PennSound
NOTE: In class, we will focus on "Le Point Mirabeau" and the "Calligrammes."
Extentions (optional): the remaining Apollinaire in PM1; more Apollinaire in French & another site
•Contrast "Ombre" ("Shadow"), Apollinaire's World War I poem, with Owen's and Sassoon's (on this syllabus, this comes next week, so you can pick up then); and his "Le Point Mirabeau" with the lost-love pomes of the last set of readings for next week.
•The Calligrammes make use visual arrangement and typography as an integral part of the poems. How does this affect the meaning or space of the poem. Compare to Mallarmé's use of white space and typogrpahy in Un coup de dés.
•Discuss the atmosphere or sensibility or mode of feeling in these poems. Use poem profiler.
•How do "Zone" and "Prose of the Transiberian" usher in the modern, new world?
Wreading:
Try some imitations of these poems. Or a homophonic translation based on listening to Apollinaire's reading.
Juxtapose images and words for either of the poets (or one of the earlier poets) along the lines of Delaunay's collaboration with Cendrars.
Make a "calligramme."
•Comment on your experiments so far: useful?, and, if so, in what way?

3. (Jan. 28)
3, part one: The Great War and Modern Memory:

Rupert Brook (1887-1915), "The Soldier" (1914)
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): "Dulce et Decorum est", "Greater Love", "Anthem for a Doomed Youth"
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967): "Repression of War Experience" and "Blighters"
Extensions (optional):
Sassoon, audio: "Died of Wounds" & "Attack"   (note: full Sassoon poems & bio available on LION)
Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918), Trench Poems: "Break of Day in the Trenches", “Returning, We Hear Larks", "Dead Man's Dump" (LION)
Furthter reading: Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory
•What are the attitudes toward war reflected in these poems? How does this translate into the forms of the work.
•How does World War I affect modernist art?
•Compare the poets this week to Apolinaire's response to WWI and also to love ...
• Pick your favorite and least favorite poem of the poets assigned. What is the reason for your selection?
Wreading: Translate one of the poems into a totally contemporary idiom, including references and diction. (That is, take one of the poems and imagine you were writing the "same" poem in 2006, with the current war and culture as your subject. Update the references but also the language, the diction/slang etc.)

3, part  two: Romance dies hard or maybe don't die at all
Dowson
British poet Alfred Noyes (1880-1958), "The Highwayman" -- Audio: read by Noyes; setting/song by Phil Ochs ( more on Ochs's version)
John Masefield (1878-1967), "Sea-Fever";   audio; from Salt Water Ballads (1902)
Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953), "Tarentella" (1932): audio and text;
also at Poetry Archive
A.E. Houseman: from A Shropshire Lad (1896): "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now", "When I was one-and-twenty", "With rue my hear is laden" [word file of these three poems)
Ernest Dowson (1867-1900): "Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae
Canadian poet Robert Service's (1874(?)-1958) The Spell of the Yukon: "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee" (also avail. as word file); Listen to Jean Shepherd recite these poems: "McGrew" & McGee". Extensions (optional): "The Land God Forgot" and "The ".
Extensions (optional): Belloc: set of poems; see esp., from A Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) "The Hippopotamus" & "The Dromedary"; also "The World Is Full of Double Beds"
•Go ahead, read the poems out loud.
•Discuss the politics of the form and prosody of these poets, with special reference to their being part of the modernist period. In other words, what particular political and social concerns are addressed by each poem and how does their use of form reflect that. How do they "fit" in to a period of wild formal experimentation? Any thoughts on gender issues as reflected in the poems?
•How would you compare these poets to the War Poets (Owen, Sassoon)?
•Belloc was fascinated by the grammaphone. How would this have affected his poem?
•Is poetry that is entertaining or light less important that "art" poems such as those by Mallarmé?
•Do these poems lose their force with the passage of time? Does that diminish the aesthetic value?
•Compare Apollinaire as WWI poet with the UK poets of the "Great War". Compare Apollinaire's "Le Pont Mirabeau" to Dowson's "Cynarae" — how do these love poems differ from other love poems in the section of earlier love poems you may have read.
•Compare the readings for last week and this week; not just Apollinaire but the formal qualities of the French modernists to these UK poets. How is "modernity" reflected in form and content in the poets and what makes them differerent from one another and from the group.

Wreading: Acrostic chance: apply a Mac Low acrostic procedure to one poem (see Experiments, #4). Comment on results

4. (Feb.4) Chinese Poetry

Visit of Li Zhimin
We will meet at the Kelly Writers House at 6!
Performance and discussion will proceed class conversation on reading.
Reading:
Li Zhimin -- a selection and in Chinese
Mao Zedong (1893-1976),  selected poems
Xu Zhimo (1897-1931), Ji Xian (b. 1913), Gu Cheng (b. 1956): pdf from Michelle Yeh anthology.
"Mity Poets" PM2  pp. 752-769, esp:
     Bei Dao (b. 1949), "The Answer" and  Bei Dao in Jacket;
     Haun Saussy on Bei Dao's "Huida/The Answer" and Tiananmen Square
     Mang Ke "Apeherd" (PM2)
     Gu Cheng (in Yeh pdf above)
      Shu Ting in PM2 and also her work in the Michelle Yeh anthology: pdf here
Language/Original poets:
      Yunte Huang, Intro;
       Original Manifesto;
       Huang Fan (b. 1963), "Poetry's New Shore,"
       Che Qianzi (b. 1963), "Flower of Two Persons" (1990);
       Yi Cun (b. 1954), "A Poet's Remark on a White Bird in Winter"
Yunte Hunag, from SHI
Ma Lan, selection
•Mao is considered one of modern China's greatest poets: how is his role as a major (and, to put it mildly, troubling) political leader and revolutionary reflected in his poetry? What role does poetry play in his political leadership? Is there a conflict between being a lyric poet and Mao's political ideology and actions.
•Discuss Huang's approach to translation, taking up our discussion of translation in the second class.
•Compare the "Misty," "Language/Original Poets," and Li Zhimin. Do a close reading of a poem from each group, perhaps using the poem profiler. Discuss the politics of poetic form in the poems (how the chosen forms reflect political or social perspectives).
•Li Zhimin will be talking about the influence of Western poetry on modern Chinese poetry. One example (somewhat negative in his view) is Xu Zhimo's idealization of Cambridge Uniiveristy, But the influence is reflected in the selection of contemporary poets. What qualities in these poems reflect a distinctly Western and also a distinctly non-Western approach to poetry?

Wreading:
Write imitations of a couple of the poems in this week's reading. In other words, change the subject or place but write a poem in a manner as close to the "original" as possible.
For those of you who know any Chinese at all: do new translations of the poems for which the Chinese is provided.

5. (Feb. 11) Futurisms
The best critical account of the futurist and formalist poetry and art around the time of Wordl War I is Marjorie Perloff's The Futurist Moment.

El Lissitzky and Hans Arp, Kunstimen ("Artisms") book cover, 1925.

5, Futurisms Part One:  Marinetti & Italian Futurism
Marinetti & related in PM1: pp. 193-215; new tr. of Futurist Manifesto
Mina Loy, “Feminist Manifesto,” “Aphorisms on Futurism,” 1914 (pdf/Penn); also pdf/Penn of ms of "Feminist Manifesto).
Images (Penn only): "Parole in Liberta" (1915) also nonrestricted gif, "Vive La France," study/drawing for "Vive La France", " Zang Tumb Tuuum"
Futurist time line (mirror of page);  the gang
Marinetti PennSound page
See photo of Luigi Russola with noise makers & his noise manifesto
Carlo Carrà,  Interventionist Demonstration (Patriotic Holiday-Freeword Painting)
[Manifestazione interventista (Festa patriottica-dipinto parolibero)], 1914
For further reading/listenting:
Marinetti manifestoes: "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism" (1909), "We Abjure Our Symbolist Masters, the Last Lovers of the Moon" (1911-15), "Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature" (1912), and "Portrait of Mussolini" (1929); "Destruction of Syntax/Words in Freedom,, "War, the World's Only Hygiene"
Futurism web site
Some more images and words
Futrurism and advertising
Conversation on Futurism -- Claire Bishop & Boris Groys
Bernstein performs Marinetti and Loy at MoMA
•Respond to the points made in Marinetti's manifesto. What are the politics of this poetry? Why does he emphasize speed, destruction, war, and the future?
•How is Marinetti's visual poetics different from Mallarme and Apollinaire?
•What is the signficance of "noise" in this work, as for instance for Luigi Russola?
•Once again, this is writing that comes out of the period around World War 1. Thoughts?
Wreading:
Rewrite one of the manifestos for a contemporary aesthetic position
Burroughs fold in: Take two different pages of poetry or manifesto and cut the pages in half vertically. Paste the mismatched pages together.

5, Futurism Part Two: Russian Futurism
PM1: pp. 220-250
Mayakovsky images (Penn only): "A Tragedy" designed by David and Vladimir Burliuk (1914) ; Dliagolosa (For the Voice) (1923); Book
For class: Khlebnikov's "Incantation by Laughter" and see also alt. translation; plus focus on Kruchenyck/Larionov, Pomade (pdf & with translation and audio —go to "Exlore the Books"); Mayakovsky, "Screaming My Head Off"(and listen to Mayakovsky read this poem, see alt. title "At the Top of My Voice").
PennSound Getty Futurist page of sound files..
Extensions (optional):
Russian Futurist manifesto: "A Slap in the Face to Public Taste" (1917)
Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922), Manifestos ("We accuse the older generation ...,: "The Word as Such," "The Letter as Such"; "To ";& at UBU,Klebnikov@RussianPoetry.net
"!Futurian," "Let Them Read on My Gravestone," "On Poetry": pdf
Kruchonyk's visual and zaum poems; see also Gerlad Janecek's essay on Kruchonykh's zaum poetry
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), PennSound audio/bilingual poems
Rodchenko/Mayakovsy Ads
Liabov Popova (1889-1924): Constructivist Composition,  Linear Composition, "Spatial Force Construction"
Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956), Cigarette ad;  "Better Pacifiers There Have Never Been"; Mayavoksy ad for cookies; portrait of Mayakovsky
Russian avant-garde books (Getty collection of digized books) and pdfs of book
•What is your response to these approaches to poetry? In other words, discuss the forms and significance of visual and sound poetry, and of the manifestos.
•Contrast Russian and Italian Futurism. How do the manifestosdiffer in orientation. A related question:
•What are the politics of this poetry? How does it connect with the Revolution of 1917?
•Khlebnikov and Kruchonyk developed a conception of "zaum" poetry (transense), using invented words. Discuss this development: is it possible to communicate with made-up words, how does zaum relate to music and to more tradtional forms of poety.
•The Russian futurists engaged in many verbal-visual collaborations. Describe the specific approaches they took and the significance of these collaborations aesthetically, politically, and socially?
•A more general question: over the past weeks, you have been readings accounts of the First World War (and now the Russian Revolution) through poems. What is the difference between such a poet's eye view (or ear view) and that of an historian or from political documents of the time?
Wreading: create visual or sound poems or visual-verbal poems, or zaum (neologistic/made-up words) poems. Or rearrange/cut-up material from this week's reading to created your own poems.

Recommnended
Tues, Feb. 17, 6:30pm: Reading/Book Party for Ron Silliman's The Alphabet
KHW, 6pm
(I will introduce)
________________________________________________________________

6. (Feb. 18)
6, Part One — DADA


The First International Dada Fair at Dr. Otto Burchard’s Berlin art gallery. Schlichter’s pig soldier can be seen hanging from the ceiling, while George Grosz stands at right with hat and cane

Tristan Tzara (1896-1963) and Hugo Ball (1886-1927) in PM1 (pp. 289-309, 746-48)
Photo; another
Dada sound poems
Picabia
Extensions/Optional:
Tzara, "Dadaism", "Dada Manifesto"& alt. version (1918)from "Dada Manifesto" (1918) and "Lecture on Dada" (1922) : also "Chanson Dada" in French
Raoul Hausmann: "The Art Critic" (click on image to enlarge); "A.B.C.D. Portrait of Artist", " Dad )" (1920)
Photo of Opening of First International Dada Fair (1920), Photo of Hausmann and Hoch
John Heartfield, "Rationalization Is on the March" (1927), "This is the Salvation They Bring" (1938), "Life and Events in Universal-City at 12:05 noon"; "German Akorns 1933"
Hannah Hoch (1889-1978), "Collage", "Cut with a Kitchen Knife"
Excellent German lanauge Dada site.

•Why was this work denounced as anti-poetry: write an attack and also a defense of the poetic/artistic value of the work.
•Continue discussion of surface/depth from the previous week
•How does collage operate in these works. How is collage differnt in poems versus visual art (e.g. (Hearfield, Hoch)?
•Much of this work is highly political without making direct political statement. Discuss the politics of form (collage, discontinuity, performance, manifesto) in these works.
•Dicuss the performances of Hugo Ball. In a more general way, discuss the performative nature of many of these works (at the most basic level — how does that differ from lyric poetry that one reads privately to oneself?)
•It is sometimes said that the Dadaists tried to break down the distinction between art and everyday life. How so?
Wreading: Tzara's hat: Cut up the poem into individual words (alternative: phrase, line) and put them in a hat. Reassemble

6, Part Two — Kurt Schwitters

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) in PM1, & audio of "Ur Sonata"
Digital images: "Blue Birds", Type Reklame, page of book collaboration
See also: Schwitters's Anna Blume (reprodiuction of German book); text of Anna Blume
Extensions (optional) on Sound Poetry:
Steve McCaffery's brief history of Sound Poetry at Ubu and McCaffery in PM2, p. 427
McCaffery, Carnival: sight and sound (see IV. items 4 & 5, text and sound)
Henri Chopin, Fresque de l'Impalapable voix (1990)
François Dufréne, "Batteries vocales, Crirythme" (1958)
Christian Prigent, "Orgasm" (1998)
Christian Bok -- Studio 111 performance, esp. 1, 4, 6, 7 (including another Hugo Ball)
Caroline Bergvall's "About Face"
Tomomi Adachi
EPC Sound Poetry Index
Carnivocal
Ubuweb
•Compare Schwitter's, Hugo Ball, and Khebnikov in terms of poetics and the use of neologism (made-up words)
•Try to do a close listening of one movement of the Ur Sonata,mapping out its changes and what it might suggest to you?
• It is reported that when Schwitters first performed this, some in the audience wept? How is this possible? Is this work conceptual, intellectual, or visceral. Run the poetry profiler on the work.
•Do you see this as a work attacking "sense" (in a Dadaist way? otherwise?) or making a new kind of sound-sense?
•Has poetry gone too far with this? Is this even poetry? If this is poetry, how would you define a poem? If not, what is this? Why isn't it music (or is is music?)?
•Compare the versions of the Ur Sonata
•Discuss some of Schwitters other works. Compare his poetry to his visual art.
Wreading: Create a sound poem. If you have a sound editor: remix the Schwitters files. Record or rehearse your own version of the Ur Sonata.

7. (Feb. 25)
7, Part 1: Duchamp: The Bride Stripped Bare by Its Viewers (Maybe)

Pierre Cabanne. Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
Duchamp in PM1
Duchamp collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Digital Images: Bicyle Wheel
Bottlerack/Dryer/Hedgehog
Disk inscribed with puns: "Esquivons Les Ecchymoses Esquimeaux Aux Mots Exquis": Let us avoid the bruises of the Eskimoes in exquisite words
Fountain
Rrose Selavy (Man Ray)
Search Phil. Museum of Art images for Duchamp
L.H.O.O.Q
Comb, PMA image; compare New Guinea Spirt Figure
short sound clip
"Eyechart"
"In Advance of a Broken Arm"
"Three Standard Stoppages" & "A Network of Stoppages"  (1913-1914) & discussion
Apolinere Enameled; PMA image (better detail) (1916-1917)
Étant Donnés, interior view (1946-1968)
Thumbnails of art
Extensions (optional): : interview with Duchamp (may not work) and another interview; Duchamp web site: Toute-fait (may not work); Marchel Duchamp.org
The Writings of Marcel Duchamp, De Capo Press
from Marjorie Peloff's 21st-Century Modernism, Chapter 3: The Conceptual Poetics of Marcel Duchamp [ .pdf | .rtf ]
•In what way might Duchamps' work be relevant for modernist poetry (apart from the immediate fact of his own literary work)? Discuss in terms of both the ready-mades and the Large Glass.
•Discuss the approach to art that Duchamp takes in the Cabanne interview: is he doing away with art or shifting the frame of what we take to be be art?
•How does the voyeurism work in "Étant Donnee"; compare the use of the "gaze" with the Baudelaire's portraits of woman or other poems in which this issue is relevant.
•Discuss the small fetish objects on display at the museum, with special reference to the significance of the writing/inscriptions.
•Perloff writes, "Duchamp’s term for the all but imperceptible difference between two seemingly identical items was, the term infrathin, a term closely linked to what Duchamp also called deferral or delay." Discuss how this relates to Duchamp's work (for example his puns) or more generally to poetry and poetics.
Wreading: Create a poem or collage based on cut-ups and excerpts from the Duchamp Dialogues.

7,  Part Two: Surrealism
Breton & Eluard, seated
PM1 338-341, 465-485 (André Breton, Philippe Soupalt, Robert Desnos),
Extensions:
Surrealism manifestos [Penn only]
Andre Breton and Leon Trotsky, “Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art” (1938)
•Describe visual images in two poems. What is the relation of the visual image to the poem's theme or point-of-view?
•What is surrealism?
•Use profiler on one or more poem
•Is there a politics to this poetry?
•Do you see a connection between Surrealim and Dada or Futurism (focussing on the poems of each movement)?
Wreading:
Substitution (1): "Mad libs." Take the poem or other source text and put blanks in place of three or four words in each line, noting the part of speech under each blank. Fill in the blanks being sure not to recall the original context.
Substitution (2): "7 up or down." Take a poem or other text and substitute another word for every noun, adjective, adverb, and verb; determine the substitute word by looking up the index word in the dictionary and going 7 up or down, or one more, until you get a syntactically suitable replacement. (Cf.: Lee Ann Brown's "Pledge" & Michael Magee's "Pledge" (go to p.37 of pdf of Morning Constitutional) or Clark Coolidge and Larry Fagin, On the Pumice of Morons.) If you find this too pre-determined, remember that that may be the value, your lack of control. However, a "liberal" alternative: pick any one of the 7 words up or down.   
Substitution (3): Find and replace. Systematically replace one word in the source poem with another word or string of words.  Perform this operation serially with the same source text, increasing the number of words in the replace string. 

Further Reading/French Poetry (optional):
Paul Valery, Alfred Jarry, Max Jacob, & Franics Ponge in PM1.
Valery's "The Cemetery by the Sea" (tr. Charles Guenther)
Ponge, "Le cimetière marin"
André Breton and Phillippe Soupault Les champs magnetiques (Magnetic Fields), 1920
Georgio De Chirico, Hebdomeros
Jacques Rouboud and Anne-Marie Albiach in PM2
Olivier Cadiot's Red, Green, & Black, tr. Charles Bernstein and Cadiot
The Random House Book of Twentieth Century French Poetry, ed. Paul Auster;
The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, ed. Mary Ann Caws

_________
Recommended Events:
Thurs., Feb. 26, noon, KHW: reaading/comnversation Jen Scappatone and Lyn Hejinian
-------------
Kenny Goldsmith will read from his work at
Temple University Center City Campus 1515 Market Street, Room 222
Thursday, February 26, 2009 – 8:00 P.M.

8  (March 4) Expressionisms
8, Part One: German Expressionism

Rilke, 1904
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) in PM1 (2 selections)
PM1: pp.263-265; Lasker-Schuller, "To the Barbarian" (p. 270), Benn & Trakl (pp. 277-285)
In class we will focus on Rilke, Duino Elegy #1; see notes by Bernstein and Perloff (just the beg. of the Perloff essay)
Extensions (optonal): RILKE: "Duino Elegies" (bilingual, multiple translations); Rilke in German;  "Letter to a Young Poet,"  "Torso of an Archaic Apollo"
Elsa Lasker-Schuller
Some related images: Edvard Munch, "The Scream" (1893), "Anxiety"
expessionism slide lecture
•Pick your favorite and least favorite poems since the last time you made such a list. Give reasons for your selection.
•Are these poets more expressive than the other poets, or is that the approach to expression is different? What does each poem "express"?
•Expressionism is sometimes understood in terms of depth rather than surface; yet Rilke might be said to be depthless. Discuss the surface/depth distinction in terms of the poems.
•Pick two poems and give a brief summary of their content. How is this summary different from the poem?
Wreading: Reverse the order of the poems, line for line or run the whole poem backword. Next: don't reverse but scramble. Comment on result.
Try one of the translation experiments or try to do your own word-for-word translation.

8, Part 2: Mandelstam's Acmeism, Antonin Artaud, Federico García Lorca
Mandelstam in PM1: pp. 390-397
Four Mandelstam poems: English (Penn only); Russian
Artaud in PM1&2; Artaud sound files at UBU
Lorca in PM1 (note: "Ode for Walt Whitman" in Spanish; a web selection of Lorca poems in Spanish)
Extensions: Lorca on "The Theory and Function of the Duende" (c. 1933)
:Lorca tr. by Paul Blackburn (bilingual)
•Pick a poem of each poet give a brief summary of its content, taking into account the way the form suggests content in these works. In other words, treat the form and style as part of the "content" for the purpose of answering this question.
Wreading: Lexical translation: Take a poem in a foreign language -- "Ode for Walt Whitman" -- that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate it word for word with the help of a bilingual dictionary. (Rewrite to suit?).

9. (March 18) Our America
José Marti
Introduction by Ernesto Grosman (from 99 Poets/1999)
The Americas -- Wikepdedia; short poet bios
José Marti (Cuba), "Our America"
Rubén Darío (Nicaragua) (Félix Rubén García Sarmiento, 1867-1916): "To Roosevelt"; poem in Spanish (PM1); poems  in Spanish
Vicente Huidobro (Chile) (note in two places in PM1):
       Spanish: "Ars Poetica," "Altazor"; more here; another site
César Vallejo (Peru) (PM1), from Triilce [poems in Spanish]
Nicolàs Guillén (Cuba) (PM1); excerpts The Daily Daily;  poems in Spanish
Pablo Neruda [Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto] (Chile) (PM1); also "Ode with a Lament"; optional: poems in Spanish; "Explaining a Few Things" (bilingual)
Maria Sabina (Mexico) (PM1 & PM2); Henry Munn on Sabina
Cecilia Vicuna (Chile/US) (PM2)
Further (optional) Reading:
Roberto Tejada, In Relation: The Poetics and Politics of Cuba's Generation-80
Oliverio Girondo
•Discuss Marti's "Our America" in the context of these poems
•Does it make a difference that these poems were written in Latin America; what would happen to the poems if you thought they were written by a European of North American?
•Discuss the use of myths and other "fourth world" features in these poems (eg relation to inidigenous cultures, cultures that do not use writing systems, non-"Western" cultures).
• Pick your favorite and least favorite poem of the poets assigned. What is the reason for your selection (use Profiler)?
Wreading:
•Try any of the translation exercises: lexical or homophonic if you don't know Spanish
•Eliminate all personal pronouns or self-reference in a poem.
•Write a version of one of these poems translated into a contemporary social/historical situation

10. (March 25)
10, Part One: A Few Brazillian Poets

Carlos Drummond de Andrade in PM1, "The Dirty Hand" (pp. 657-58)
_____, "In the Middle of the Way"
_____, "In the Kingdom of Poetry" or at PEPC
_____, "The Bomb"
Haroldo de Campos in PM2
____ "Circulado," with music by Caetano Veloso (alt. file in protected folder) & Veloso on this song (NOTE: the format is prose for original and translation).
______Three concrete poems at UBU
Décio Pignatari, Bebe Coca-Cola; see also Régis
Régis Bonvicino, "Blue Tile", PennSound audio with bilingual texts: #s4 (Talvez), 7 (Me Transformo), 14 (Where), and 16 (Blue) (for texts: scroll down or use search on title)
João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999): Three poems;
Paulo Leminksi:: untitled poem
Extensions (optional):
Josely Vianna Baptista, one poem from 99 Poets/1999
Carlos Drummond de Andrade in PM1 (remainder); also three poems (bilingual)
Statements on Brazilian poetry from 99 Poets/1999 by de Campos and Bonvicino
De Campos: Selection of Poems; Charles Bernstein on de Campos, Roland Greene on de Campos;  Galáxias site. Sound file: Calcas Cor de Abobora
Mary Ellen Solt on Brazillian Concrete Poetry
Anthropophagite Manifesto by Oswald de Andrade; anothter tr; also Mary Ann Caws tr.
Caetano Veloso: a few songs ( restricted access)
Jorge de Lima in PM1
*
•Write in some detail about two or three poems. Detail any literary "devices" used (see Profiler).
Deformation: Use the "Meaning Eater" engine to deform the text of a poem. Use a sound editor to scramble, resound a sound file of a poem.

10, Part Two: Negritude: Senghour, Césaire, Damas
Césaire
PM1, pp.559-581, 736, 751, and PM2 p. 73-4
Extensions (optional): Listen to Clayton Eshleman read his Césaire translation; Césaire in French
•Pick your favorite and least favorite poems since the last time you made such a list. Give reasons for your selection.Use profiler.
•Contrast the poems read today with the poems from the past two recent classes -- Surrealism and Lorca/Artaud, allowing the strong connection between the two.
•Imagine Damas's "SOS" was written but a white women from the midwest. Would that change the meaning of the poem?
Wreading:
•If you know any French, try a bit of tranlsation of Césaire
•Negation/Opposites: Negate every phrase or sentence in the poem or in some way substitute opposite words for selected words in the source text: "I went to the beach" becomes "I went to the office"; "I got up" becomes "She sat down"; "I will" become "I will not"; etc. As an alternative, take a poem and change what it says line for line or phrase for phrase; not opposite, just different.

11. (Aprl 1) Dialects
11, Part One: Hugh MacDiarmid (1892- 1978) & Synthetic Scots
MacDiarmid: info on painting here
& Basil Bunting & Steve McCaffery
MacDiarmid: Selection and note in PM1 and poem in PM2; then go to selected poems for "Watergaw" listen to audio (psswd needed) or poem/text at Poetry Archive ; then for Drunk Man Looks at Thistle, follow first 100 lines with audio at PennSound; which also has audio for "British Leftish Poetry 1930-40," "The Kind of Poetry I Want," and "The Glass of Pure Water" (in PM2).
Full text of MacDiarmid at LION.
Basil Bunting in PM1: Opening lines of Briggflats & audio; extensions: full text of the poem is available on LION (library/e-resources; quick search: "Bunting Briggflatts". Also: Poetry Archive has an excerpt from part 1, text and streaming-only audio.
Extensions: MacDiarmid, "Revolutionary Art of the Future";   Bio and additional audio (Penn only)
Extensions (optional): Tom Leonard "Unrelated Incidents" and comment
•Discuss the audio recording: how does it compare to the printed text?
•What are the political implications of MacDiarmid's forms?
•MacDiarmid calls his language in "Drunk Man" "synthetic" dialect. What does he mean by "synthetic"?
Wreading:
Convert one of the poems from the syllabus into your local dialect
Write a standard English translation of one of dialect poems

11, Part Two Dialectic of Dialect: Jamiaca

This set of readings extends from the MacDiarmid, so feel free to go back and forth between MacDiarmid and Bunting (who were friends and contemporaries) and Bennett and Smith and McCaffery.
Louise Bennett, "Bans O' Killing" and "Colonization in Reverse";  audio of "Colinization" (extensions: "Dutty Tough" audio)
Michael Smith, "It a Come" and " Mi C-Yaan Believe It"
April 5:
Steve McCaffery, "The Kommunist Manifesto or Wot We Wukkers Want": MP3 & TEXT. This is a translation into Yorkshire dialect of Marx & Engels' Communist Manifesto
•Discuss the formal, stylistic, sonic, prosodic, ideological, nationalistic, and political implications of these works.
•(Bennett:) Is humor an appropriate ingredient for serious poetry?
•Is this minor literature (in Deleuze and Guattari's sense)? (For those who may know their book on this subject.)
•Compare MacDiarmid and  Bunting, or Bunting and Smith
•Listening to additional cuts of Smith: what is the connection between his "dub poetry" and Reggae, or, to ask this another way, what is the relation of the poems to the songs?
Wreading:
Use the dialect engine to translate poems from the syllabus into one or several "dialects". Or do this just by the accent you give in reading the work out loud.
Create standard English versions of some of these poems.
Further readings/listenings: Kamu Brathwaite

April 8: NO CLASS: PASSOVER (will make up on April 14)

12. (April 15) New Zealand/Australia; Wystan Curnow visit

Note: Curnow gives a talk on April 7 & reads on April 14 at 6 or 6:30 at KWH
New Zealand
Wystan Curnow, Modern Colours
Wystan Curnon on PennSound
Curnow intro to NZ poetry
Further reading (optional): Intervew, Proses, Climbing Rangtoto, more writing
*
Len Lye: Lye — who is primarly known as an avant-garde film maker — texts are available online at www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz  See: No Trouble (1930) and Am Thing (1948).  This site also has Roger Horrocks essay on Lye's poetry. Other Lye filsm on web linked at Wiki page.


Colin McCahon (New Zealand 1919-1887):
Numerals: "Numerals""Numbers" "Teaching Aids" "Walk with me" "Song of the shining cuckoo--a poem"
Letters: "I Am" "Angels and bed[H]""The days and nights in the wilderness" [I & T]
Poems: "The Lark's Song""Poems 1-3"  "Elias Triptych" "Grant us...", "Am I Scared""I applied my name" "I te puke" "In my dark winter", "In the courtyard" "Nouns & verbs" "O let us weep" "Open door"

Allen Curnow
note: Curnow's work is on Literture Online (via lirbrary e-resources)
four poems selected by Wystan Curnow'  (Word doc/Penn only):
'Landfall in Unknown Seas'  from Sailing or Drowning (1943)
'A Framed Photograph,' from Trees, Efifigies, and Moving Objects, (1972)
'You Will Know When You Get There.' You Will Know When You Get There (1982)
'Canto or Signs Without Wonders,' The Loop in Lone Kauri Road (1988):audio on trailer at www.pointofview.co.nz
'A Time of Day,' The Loop .... Audio

Alan Loney
Start with the two Close Listening shows on PennSound
Further reading (optional and I suggest this order and note first two have audio on PennSound): Nowhere to Go, Katalogos, Fragmenta Nova

Michelle Legott
7 Poems from Dia
Dove

Australia

Ern  Malley': read the story (Wikipedia gives quick summary) and complete poems here; see also Jacket issue on Malley

Lionel Fogarty (born in 1957 in the Cherbourg Aboriginal Community):
>A selection of poems from the collection Minyung Woolah Binnung — What Saying Says
>3 poems form Jacket #1
>more on Fogarty & note upcoming Salt collection

Javant Biarujia: from "Hidden Voices": more/optional: "Tenaraic; interview

Further Reading
NZ EPC
John Tranter; Tranter on PennSound
John Kinsella
Anthology of Australian Poetry to 1920, ed. Kinsella

Write up to three questions for Wystan Curnow.
How does Curnow's Primary Colors connect up to the historical poetry you have been doing for the class?
Thinking of any two or three of the poets this week: is there geographic location significant for their work. Is their gender signficant.
Discuss Forgarty's work in the context of it's coming form an  aborigianal community: is this work avant-garde? how do ethe pictures and words interact? does this work bring to mind other work you've read this semester?
Allen Curnow is a poet coming out of a British tradition that we have not focussed on much this semester; for example, Auden. Discuss the form/style of the work. Discuss the sense of place.
Len Lye is one of the pioneer independent film makers. Give your impression of his work.
Wreading:
Write imitations of two or more of the poets.

----------------------------
Recommended Poery Reading:
Thurs. April 16, 5:30pm KWH, Rachel Zolf

13. (April 22)
13, Part One: Exile: Turning without Return

Paul Celan: PM2 (three entries) & "Todesfuge" audio (and other poems)  &  (commentary); Sprachglitter (optional: commentary) [Unrestricted source for Celan sound files and poems]
Charles Bernstein, "Celan's Folds and Veils" (from Texutual Practice 18:2, 2004) on "Todtnuaberg"
Extensions (optional):
Jabes, Adonis, Darwish, in PM2
Adonis & Darwish in 99 Poets
Abdelwahab Meddeb in 99 Poets
•How do these poets respond to exile? What's poetry got to do with it?
•What is Celan's relation to his "native" language or "mother tongue" and his other languages? In what way is Celan's relation to German expressed in his work
•How does the sound-shape of "Todesfugue" relate to its meaning?
•Is my Celan essay over-reading?
•Use the poem profiler on Celan
Wreading:
Try some homophonic translations of "Todesfugue"
Re-order "Todesfugue": lines in reverse direction; reverse direction of the words. Erase half the words to create another poem.
Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem and translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence.

13. Part Two: Prose of Identities: Case Studies
Brossard
Samuel Beckett in PM2 & on-line or "Imaginatiion, Dead, Imagine" (Penn only) or public site
Monique Wittig, and Nicole Brossard in PM2
Wittig ("Le Corps Lesbien") in French original
Brossard in 99 Poets; extension: Brossard on PennSound
Dubravka Djuric, "Post-Communist Poetry" from 99 Poets/1999
___, "Disordering" & other poems (translationa follows original)
•Use the Poem Profiler to describe the mood, psychological state, and other features of several poems.
Wreading: Cut-ups: take lines from these poems for this week and re-order them into a new poem. Larger project: do a cut-up from all the poems we have read so far.

14. (April 29):  Last Class [Make-up class]
Note: this class will being at 7pm and go till 9:50! & we will meetin in FBH 112.
14, Part One: Concrete and Visual Poetry


PM2: pp.304-316
Concrete and Visual Poetry selection
Tom Phillips (PM2); see also Tom Phillips, Humament home page

14, Part Two:Digital
Cayley and Rosenberg in PM2
On Visual Poetry: Brows; pick and commonet on your favorites
On Digital Browse through the list, but start with Andrews's "On Lionel Kearns", Stefans's "Dreamlive, Chang's "Dakota", and then Glazier's"Territorio Libre"
•What are the distinctive
Wreading: Make your own digital poems or create a blueprint/plan for a digital poem you would like to make
Note: LAST CLASS
As a final post, please give your response to the course, focussed primarily on the poetry and poetics, but also the class and listserve discussion of the poetry and poetics, the web-based syllabus, PennSound, and the wreading experiments. Chart changes in your thinking about poetry and poetics from before the class began to now. Thinking back on all the poems read and heard, discuss/revisit some of the work that stays with you the most. For those who took both English 88 (American poetry) and English 62: compare the two sets of  poetry/poetics read in  each course. One final question (after Robert Duncan) and specifically in respect to the focus of this course: What don't you know? What would you like to pursue?

All material for this class should be handed in by Friday, April 21. If you plan on submitting work after that time, please email; extensions are possible. For those who might like to do supplemental work for the class: by all means, expand on subjects already approached or pursue any of the "extensions." NOTE: supplemental work is not required for the course.

Extensions: Alan Golding on PM
PM launch reading at KWH on PennSound

Bonus Track One: Russian poetry modern and contempoary
Osip Mandelstam
Marina Tsvetayeva, Anna Akhmatova in PM1
Daniel Kharmes
Arkadii Dragomochenko in PM2
Dragomoschenko in 99 Poets
Akhmatova@RussianPoetrey.net

Bonus Track Two: Italian poetry modern and contemporary
Eugenio Montale, Guiseppe Ungaretti in PM1
Amelia Roselli in PM2
Elio Pagliarani at PennSound
Il Novissimi, Cesare Pavasse, Eduardo Sanguineti, Antonio Porta, Adriano Spatola, Luigi Ballerini, Andrea Zonzotto, Milli Graffi, Emilio Villa, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Milo de Angelis, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Giulia Niccolai, Antonia Pozzi, Nanni Cagnone
Bibliography

Bonus Track Three: UK Now and Then
Auden; Sitwell in PM1
Raworth, O'Sullivan, Prynne in PM2
O'Sullivan, "Red Shift" in 99 Poets and audio
Further reading:
Auden, "Musee des Beaux Arts"
Auden, "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"
Larkin, "This Be the Verse"
Dylan Thomas, sound files
Out of Everywhere: An Anthology of Contemporary Linguistically Innovative Poetry by Women in North America & the UK, ed. Maggie O'Sullivan
Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry, ed. Keith Tuma
Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970, ed. Richard Caddel and Peter Quartermain

Bonus Track Four: Vienna Group
PM2. pp/ 115-126
Jandl, "Scenes from Real Life"
Jandl at Ubu

Bonus Track Five: Caribbean Poetry
Kamau Brathwaite
Derek Walcott
Louise Bennett
Claude McKay
Michael Smith
Eduardo Glissant
Malcolm de Chazal
Linton Kwezi Johnson

Bonus Track Six: Brecht & Weil

Class Visitors 2005:

Christian Bok (Canada) (Last Class): Class Visit and Studio 111 recording.
Class will meet in the Kelly Writers House for reading and return to Studio 111 for interview
After the class, there will be a reception and class party in the Kelly Writers House (4:30 to 6)
Eunoia and audio of Eunoia
Christian Bok: sound poems at UBU. Note Bok at KWH April 6 at 3pm
For the Studio 111 recording, about half the class will be selected to ask questions as part of the recoding session. Submit proposed questions over the blog by Saturday at the lastest and I will select the group for the recording

Caroline Bergvall (UK/Europe): reading and Studio 111 recording sessions

Caroline Bergvall's "About Face" and "Via" (at PennSound)
___, Ambient Fish (digital poem, see class #24)
___, Eclat (dip in and out, as much as time allows)
Recommended (optional):
Perloff on Bergvall and Bok
For the Studio 111 recording, about half the class will be selected to ask questions as part of the recoding session. Submit proposed questions over the blog by Saturday at the latest and I will select the group for the recording. For your response: comment on the work and also suggest several questions.
Wreading: "No wave." Retype the target work, without making any changes. Proofread for accuracy. Reflect on the process. The reformat the work with differnet typographic and visual elements.

Leevi Lehto visit (Finland)
Note: Class will meet in the Kelly Writers House Art Cafe
Lehto's talk, anthology, and photos of Penn visit
Lehto's short anthology of Finnish poetry..
Introduction to Lehto's work
Lehto's reading at KWH on 2/23/05
Paavo Haavikko in PM2
Background reading (optional):
Leevi Lehto author page
Kalevala (first written version of national "oral"/"folk" epic, 1835) Kalevala in English
Further reading (optional): Scandanavian Poets
Edith Södergran in PM1
Inger Christensen, Gunnar Ekelöff in PM2
Gunnar Björling, tr, Fredrik Herzberg (from boundary 2)
boundary 2 special Swedish supplement: Volume 29, Number 1, Spring 2002 (via Project Muse), includes Jesper Svenbro, Stig Larsson, Ann Jäderlund, Jörgen Gassilewski, Helena Eriksson, Lars Mikae Raattamaa
Wreading:
Try a variant of these three translation exercises using the "Lost in Translation" "Babel" engine, or other web-based translations engines, such as Babelfish and Free Translation.com.
Google Poem: construct a poem using Leevi Lehto's engine (use the patterns feature).

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