Emily Dickinson Of Visitors--the fairest-- For Occupation--This

Thurs, Sept. 16 - Emily Dickinson

• Emily Dickinson, #657 ("I dwell in possibility") [text]
• video: Al Filreis and Shawn Walker discuss [RealAudio] "I dwell in possibility"
• audio (same as above): Filreis and Walker discuss [mp3] "I dwell in possibility"
• brief biography of Emily Dickinson
• Dickinson, #214 ("I taste a liquor never brewed") [text]
• Dickinson, #632 ("The brain is wider than the sky") [text]
• Dickinson, #1129 ("Tell all the truth but tell it slant") [text]
• Dickinson, #556 ("The Brain, within its Groove") [text]
• Listen to a 25-minute PoemTalk discussion [mp3] hosted by Al Filreis about Susan Howe's understanding of Emily Dickinson
• poetic terms: meter | line | foot | iamb | couplet | ballad meter | assonance
  supplemental/optional readings:
• Dickinson online archive

Tues, Sept. 21 & Thurs, Sept. 23 - Walt Whitman and some Whitmanians

• biography of Walt Whitman
• Whitman, Song of Myself, read cantos 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 47, 52
• Whitman, "The Sleepers"

  Walt Whitman, country bumpkin? --from Leaves of Grass

• Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric"
• poetic term: repetition
• Allen Ginsberg, "A Supermarket in California"
• Allen Ginsberg performs [mp3] "A Supermarket in California" [note: after that he performs "America"]
• Allen Ginsberg performs [RealVideo] "A Supermarket in California" (courtesy Best Minds/The Museum of American Poetics)
• Ginsberg, "America"
• Ginsberg, "Sphincter"
• William Carlos Williams, "Danse Russe"
• Al Filreis & Shawn Walker discuss "Danse Russe" [RealVideo]
• Filreis & Walker (same as above) discuss [mp3] "Danse Russe"
• Williams, "Smell!"
• Williams reads [RealAudio] "Smell!"
• Williams reads [mp3] "Smell!" at Harvard in 1951 (PennSound recording)
• Williams, "Catholic Bells"
• Williams reads [RealAudio] "Catholic Bells"
• Williams reads [mp3] "Catholic Bells" (PennSound recording)
• Whitman's working-class hero from Guthrie to Springsteen
  supplemental/optional readings:
• Guillaume Appolinaire, "There Is"
• Henry Miller, from Tropic of Cancer
• Whitman, "To a Pupil"
• Walt Whitman as remembered by the radical "Mother Bloor"
• Walt Whitman's style according to communist critic Samuel Sillen in 1955
• "The Poetry of Barbarism" by George Santayana, partly about Whitman

Tues, Sept. 28 - Dickinson (again) and some Dickinsonians

the sentence

"Oh yes, the sentence," Robert Creeley once told the critic Burton Hatlen, "that's what we call it when we put someone in jail."

• Dickinson, #303 ("The soul selects her own society") [text]
• Dickinson, #1695 and #1705 [texts]
• Dickinson's "I taste a liquor never brewed" as edited and anthologized by Oscar Williams
• Oscar Williams, "The Last Supper" (from the anthology Immortal Poems of the English Language edited by Oscar Williams)
• Dickinson, #1052 ("I never saw a moor") [text]
• Dicksinson's #1052 ("I never saw a moor") as it appeared in a famous anthology of American poetry published in 1900 [text & images]
• Dickinson's #1129 & #632 once more [text]
• Whitman according to Dickinson
• Elizabeth Bishop, "Filling Station"
• Lorine Niedecker, headnote (Norton)
• Lorine Niedecker, brief biographical profile
• Lorine Niedecker, "[A country's economics sick]"
• John Timpane's review of Niedecker's Collected Works (2003)
• Lorine Niedecker, "You are my friend," "Grandfather advised me"
• Niedecker, "I rose from marsh mud" [wedding poem]
• Niedecker, "Don't tell me property is sacred!"
• Niedecker, from "Switchboard Girl" (1951)
• H.D., "Red Rose and a Beggar"
• Ron Silliman on Dickinson
• Rae Armantrout, "About" (MP3)
• Rae Armantrout's PennSound page
• Rae Armantrout, "The Way"
• Rae Armantrout discusses "The Way" with Charles Bernstein and reads the poem
• PoemTalk show about "The Way" - with Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman and Rachel Blau DuPlessis
• Rae Armantrout, "About"
• Rae Armantrout, "Solid" (MP3; performed at the Writers House, October 2000)
• Rae Armantrout reading her own poems through the influence of Dickinson
• Ron Silliman on Dickinson--Niedecker--Armantrout
• Cid Corman, "It isnt for want"
• Cid Corman reading "It isn't for want" (mp3)
• Cid Corman, "Enuresis"
• Cid Corman reads "Enuresis" (audio) ()
• Cid Corman, "Assistant"
• Cid Corman, "Assistant" audio recording (mp3)
• Cid Corman, ["follow the stream"]
• Listen to a 25-minute PoemTalk discussion [mp3] of Cid Corman's "Eneuresis" hosted by Al Filreis
• audio recording of a conversation with Cid Corman at the Kelly Writers House, November 19, 2001
• paper option #1A How is the Dickinsonian or "intensive" modern poetic practice, as found specifically in Dickinson's #303, 1670, 1695, and 1705, furthered or supported by the poems by Lorine Niedecker on the reading list? In other words: what's so "Dickinsonian" about Niedecker? (We are reading several Niedecker poems; don't feel obliged to mention all of them in your analysis; but do refer at least to two of them.)
• paper option #1B How is the Dickinsonian or "intensive" modern poetic practice, as found specifically in Dickinson's #303, 1670, 1695, and 1705, furthered or supported by the poems by Rae Armantrout on the reading list? In other words: what's so "Dickinsonian" about Armantrout? (We are reading several Armantrout poems; don't feel obliged to mention all of them in your analysis; but do refer at least to two of them.)
• paper option #2 Look again at Dickinson's "I taste a liquor never brewed" as edited and anthologized by Oscar Williams. Would you argue that what Williams does to Dickinson is (to some degree) to make her less Dickinsonian? Do you think Williams' editing tends to diminish some of the Dickinsonian qualities of the poem? If so, work with the two versions of the poem and describe how this operates? If you think the Dickinsonian quality of the poem is not diminished by what Williams does as editor, explain your position again with respect to the two versions of the poem.
  supplemental/optional readings:
• recording of a live webcast discussion on Whitman and Dickinson, held on October 3, 1999 ()
• audio (mp3) recording of the above-mentioned discussion on Whitman and Dickinson
• Lorine Niedecker, part 9 of "For Paul" (1950)

  ---

  navigate 88: schedule | key | home | PAPERs | m a i l the s t a f f