The Politics of Poetic Form

Charles Bernstein
English 584 / Comparative Literature 728
Fall 1998
Thursdays 12:30pm, 438 Clemens

Requirements: Weekly short response paper; one or more longer responses, to be presented in class, to guest speakers or assigned or recommended book. Final paper or project.

The Wednesdays at Four series is an integral part of the class. Please attend as possible. Responses in seminar and Core-L may be to the syllabus readings or to these events.
 

1. (Sept. 3) Introduction

2. (Sept. 10 & part 2 TBA) What Is Ideology?
Part 1:
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Louis Althusser, "Ideological State Apparatus" in Lenin and Philosophy, tr. Ben Brewster (R); excerpt
Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory"
John Thompson, Studies in Ideology
*
Part 2:
Jean Baudrillard, Mirror of Production, tr. Mark Poster
V.N. Volisinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language
Ferrucio Rossi-Landi, from Language as Work and Play
Thomas Kuhn, from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Chantall Mouffe, "Hegemony and New Political Subjects"
Simone Weil, from Gravity and Grace
Alan Davies, "Lies"

Recommended:
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious (R), part 1
____, Marxism & Form, The Prison House of Language
Further reading:
Perry Anderson, Concerning Western Marxism
Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method; Science in a Free Society
Evelyn Fox Keller, "Feminism & Science" in Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology
Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminist Theory
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Gramsci, Antonio, A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935
Karl Marx

3. (Sept. 17) Language as Social Space
Dell Hymes, "Studying the Interactions of Language and Social Life"
Luce Irigary, "Linguistic Sexes and Gender"
Pierre Bourdieu, "The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language" in Language & Symbolic Power
Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control (Ch 8 & 9; optionally, chs 5­7, but esp check out pp. 111­12, 115­16, 134­35
Alvin Goulder, The Future of Intellectuals, Chapter 6.
Recommended:
Michel DeCerteau, from The Practice of Everyday Life

4. (Sept.24) Geoff Ward, "Teleotropic Syntax in the Whispering Gallery"
Ward, Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets
___ Rilke's Elegies, Barbarously Recast; see also other Ward in PR
Ward asks that we consider the use of syntax in the poets we are current reading and bring in example. He will focus on various works by John Ashbery and Tom Raworth. In addition: follow up with references to works discussed in Statutes of Liberty.

5. (Rescheduled for Weds. Oct 7, 7pm): Laura (Riding) Jackson & the Ethical Limits of Poetic Form
The poems and prose of Riding (Jackson) is the subject of a conference Thursday and Friday of this week at Cornell.
Poems of Laura Riding
Laura (Riding) Jackson and Schuyler Jackson, Rational Meaning
Recommended:
The Poetry Room has an extensive collection. Esp. recommended: The Telling, Progress of Stories, and Anarchy Is not Enough; also First Awakening: the Early Poems

6. (Oct. 15) Maria Damon, "Hannah Weiner: Clairvoyance and Trauma"
Damon, The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry
Hannah Weiner, Spoke
EPC Weiner home page, including Grosman and LINEbreak interviews

7. (Oct. 22) Robert Grenier: "Realzing Things"
Grenier, Phantom Anthems
___, Sentences
EPC Grenier home page, follow all links
Larry Eigner, Windows/Walls/Yards/Way
Recommended:
Grenier: A Day at the Beach
Eigner: Areas Lights Heights plus extensive collection in Poetry Room

8. (Oct. 29) Literature and Ideology
Jerome McGann, Romantic Ideology
Antony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse
Christian Prigent, "What Use Poetry"
Further reading:
Pierre Macherey, Theory Of Literary Production
Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture

9. (Nov. 5) High, Middle, & Low: Art and Its Others
Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture - "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" & "The Plight of Culture"
Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art, ed. by JoAnn Wypijewski
Deleuze/Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, esp. chap. 3
Guy DeBord, Society of the Spectacle, tr. Donald Nicholson-Smith
full text at http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord/SOTS/sotscontents.html
There will also be a screening of the film version of SoS, to be arranged

10. (Nov. 12) Renée Hubert: "Removable Boundaries: Illustration and Bookarts"
Hubert, Surrealism and the Book
--, sections from The Cutting Edge of Reading: the Artist's Books (X)

11. (Nov. 19) The Politics of Poetic Form
The Politics of Poetic Form, ed. CB

12. (Rescheduled for Monday Nov. 23 at 7pm) "They Call Me Mr. Yasusada, Motherfucker": The Politics of Literary Forgery
Double Flowering from the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada
Further Reading:
Ossian, tr. James McPhearson
Michael Heyward, The Ern Malley Affair
Edward Said, Orientalism

13. (Dec. 3) Mainstream, Outside, & Not Around -- Poetry and Communities (March 14)
Alan Golding, From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry (R, TL)
Michelle Wallace, "Invisibility Blues"
Jed Rasula, "Nietzche in the Nursery"
Clayton Eshleman, "The Gospel According to Norton"
Recommended:
Jed Rasula, The American Poetry Wax Museum: Reality Effects 1940-1990

14. (Dec. 10) Last Class

Bibliography
John Berger, Ways of Seeing N7430.5 .W39 1973b
Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production HB97.5 .B32713
Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy: B 4249 L384 A69 1972
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious PN81 .J29
Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control P41 P74 V. 1,2,3
Alvin Goulder, The Future of Intellectuals HM213 G68
Geoff Ward, Statues of Liberty: The New York School of Poets PS255.N5 W37 1993
Poems of Laura Riding PS3519.A363 A17
Laura (Riding) Jackson and S. Jackson, Rational Meaning PS3519 .A363 Z467 1997
Maria Damon, The Dark End of the Street PS325 .D36 1993
Jerome McGann, Romantic Ideology PR 590 M34 1983
Antony Easthope, Poetry as Discourse PR 508. D57 E2 1983
Painting by numbers: Komar and Melamid's scientific guide to art, ed. by JoAnn Wypijewski ND1143 .K66 1997
Guy DeBord, Society of the Spectacle HM291 .D413 1994
Renee Hubert, Surrealism and the Book NC963S87 .H87H8 1988
Alan Golding, From Outlaw to Classic: Cannons in American Poetry PS303 . G6 1995
Jed Rasula, The American Poetry Wax Museum
Robert Grenier, Phantom Anthems
Larry Eigner, Windows/Walls/Yards/Way
Hannah Weiner, Spoke Sun & Moon
Double Flowering from the Notebooks of Araki Yasusada
 
 
background image: Felix Bernstein