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Rachel Blau DuPlessis |
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Temple University,
Department of English Office Hours: Tuesdays 9-10:30 and Thursdays 11-1:30, and other days, on a week by week basis, always by appointment in 954 Anderson. Phone: 215-204-1810 (Temple, voice mail). e-mail: rdupless@astro.temple.edu. Course Description: Case Studies in Gender, Poetry and Poetics in Twentieth Century Writing. Taking three sites for investigation and spending three-four weeks on each, this course will discuss poems and poetics, examining the gender issues that occur in literary texts and in their surround--manifesto claims, group formations, critical writing and letters by poets, and other institutions of poetry as a practice. The three sites will be 1) early Anglo-American modernism (1910-1925/30)--considering work by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Mina Loy, H.D., Marianne Moore 2) post-WWII United States "Projective" verse of the 1950s, considering mainly Charles Olson but also Frances Boldereff and Robert Creeley 3) the New York School, {SEE REVISION the "uptown" work of John Ashbery, and} the "downtown" St. Marks formation of the 1960s-1970s and later, with poetry by Ted Berrigan and Alice Notley and Anne Waldman being a focus. Alice Notley will be in residence for a week in February under the auspices of the Creative Writing Program, and we will invite her to talk to us about some of these issues. We will head up the course with some feminist theory about poetry. My original plan for doing French Surrealism in addition to the three formations considered above had to be scrapped when I actually looked at the course and its time frames. This course will offer the opportunity for original research, argument and critical thinking. Students have a choice of two exploratory papers of about 10-15 pp. or one (circa) 30 page paper conceived of as a critical intervention (with the ultimate goal of having publishable work). In addition, some other pages of writing or preparation will occur: 5 critical summaries, one oral report on readings in Olson's poetry, and one letter about your research plans. Class discussion and oral reports will be based on the summaries. By gender issues in literature I mean at least ideas and representations of maleness and femaleness, manhood, womanhood, femininity and masculinity, ideas of queering or destabilizing gender binaries and normative sexuality, uses of female, male and ambiguous figures in poetry, gender ideologies and their social and theoretical resonance, sexualities, and debates around sexuality in modernity, including issues of representation. Most of these issues were put into play by varieties of feminist criticism and gay and lesbian criticism. Ideas of gender (etc.) are not static and they alter over time, by virtue of changing historical conditions, different ideological models and shifts in social norms. They may be contradictory in the work of an individual poet, as well. Gender materials can be marked inside a literary text. Emphasis on gender/ sexuality will not be exclusive, for we will, if necessary, examine and incorporate attention to other social locations. Epigraphs for the course: "In proposing gender as a basic problem and an essential category in cultural and historical analysis, feminists have recast the issue of women's relative identity as equally an issue for men, who, upon ceasing to be mankind, become, precisely, men. Thus gender has emerged as a problem that is always implicit in any work." Myra Jehlen, "Gender." In Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990, 265. From an interview
by Anne Waldman & Jim Cohn of Ted Berrigan (August 1978): TB: They didn't know how to convert this male information to female value. … But it was true, it wasn't a very good time for women." In Nice to See You: Homage to Ted Berrigan. Ed. Anne Waldman. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1991, 107. Books were ordered at the Temple University Bookstore, SAC. You can also probably go on-line and get them. For example, I've heard that B&N online is cheaper than our Barnes and Noble store. You may be able to get some of these books, used, via <Amazon.com> There is also a good amount of material reserve that you will have to negotiate variously. When work is otherwise unavailable, it will be provided for you. Books (required) also ordered:
2. All students will report on a chunk of poetry by Olson, in our gender scan of his shorter poems; this will occur over three weeks, reading through his non-Maximus poems. 3. All students will have at least one conference during the early part of the semester, between January 16 and February 20, but definitely before Spring Break. The material to be covered in this conference will be your work to date and your possible paper topic(s) 4. Papers.
Option: two shorter papers. These papers are minimum 10 and maximum
15 pages each. This process begins with a Research Plan (in the
form of a letter), due in March right after Spring Break. If the
two paper option is chosen, the first paper will be due no later
than April 3 and the second paper will be due on April 24. Students
exercising the two paper option will have a conference after April
3, and before their second paper is in its final stages. For both
sets of students, there will be a mini-conference presenting your
findings, in class on April 24. 5. Papers.
Option: one long paper. Students exercising the one paper option
will usually be more mature students ready to work on a publishable
paper. This process begins with a Research Plan (in the form of
a letter), due in March right after Spring Break. If the one long
paper option is chosen, the due date is April 24. There will be
a mini-conference presenting your findings, in class on April
24. As best as I can figure it, the mini-papers at 5% each count for about 30% of the work done in the course and (if a large paper is chosen) that paper is 70%; if two shorter papers are chosen, they are 35% each. The Research Plan may get evaluated in relation to the paper. These are guidelines only, because they don't allow for classwork (i.e. talking), which is, of course, somewhat based on your mini-papers. If you are doing two papers and your grades differ wildly, they will be tipped towards the latter part of the semester. I hope I don't have to mention that you are not to cut class. January 16. Reading Poetry, Reading Gender. What are we talking about? What poetry, where, whose? What critical positions have emerged in thirty years of discussions of gender, poetry, poetics? Women's poetry. Canons and recovery. The women's poetry movement. Gay/ lesbian writing. Production, dissemination, reception. "Quality." The "feminine."Ideological materials around gender/sexuality in poetry: muse, female figures, genius. Social-ideological institutions of poetry: group formations, anthologies, dissemination, reception, canon. Reading: Lynn Keller and Cristanne Miller, "Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory." Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994: 1-14." Rachel Blau DuPlessis, from "For the Etruscans" (1979) and from "Otherhow" (1985), The Pink Guitar: Writing as Feminist Practice. NY: Routledge, 1990:11-19 and140-142. Rita Felski, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics: Feminist Literature and Social Change. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989: 175-182. Griselda Pollock,
Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art's
Histories. London: Routledge, 1999. from "Chapter 1: About
Canons and Culture Wars" and from "Chapter 2: Differencing:
Feminism's encounter with the canon" 3-11 and 23-29. Reading: The Waste Land and Other Poems. Read The Waste Land and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "Preludes," "Hysteria," "Portrait of a Lady," "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar," "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," (look at "Ash Wednesday"). Critical Readings: Maud Ellmann, The Poetics of Impersonality: T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1987. "Chapter III: The Waste Land: A Sphinx without a Secret": 91-113. on reserve now Wayne Koestenbaum, Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration. NY: Routledge, 1989. "Chapter 4: The Waste Land: T.S. Eliot's and Ezra Pound's Collaboration on Hysteria": 112-139. on reserve now Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. From the Introduction: Axiomatic: 1-19 and from "Chapter 4: The Beast in the Closet: James and the Writing of Homosexual Panic": 182-195. recalled for reserrve Colleen Lamos, Deviant Modernism: Sexual and Textual Errancy in T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1998. "Chapter 2: The End of Poetry for Ladies": 55-117. recalled for reserve (Critical reading summary: choose one of these four. Due in class on Jan. 23 ) January 30 Modern Cohorts: Ezra Pound, H.D., Marianne Moore. Making and Remaking Literary History. Reading: Pound,
poems from Lustra ("Tenzone," "The Condolence,"
"Salutation the Second," "Commission, " "Dance
Figure," "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley." Also, "Others"
[review of Loy and Moore] from The Little Review, 1918, in Gender
of Modernism. Gender of Modernism recalled for reserve Moore: "Critics and Connoisseurs," "The Monkeys," "New York," "People's Surroundings," "Those Various Scalpels," "Novices," "Marriage." Also "Hymen" (a review) in Gender of Modernism Critical Readings: Ronald Bush, "Ezra Pound" and the writings of Pound, in Gender of Modernism, 353-371 Susan Stanford Friedman, "H.D." and the writings of H.D. in Gender of Modernism, 85-138 Marilyn Brownstein, "Marianne Moore" and at least "Hymen" in Gender of Modernism, 323-334 and 350-352 (Critical Reading to summarize): Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity. Cambridge: Harvard U.P., 1995. "Chapter 1: Modernity and Feminism": 11-34. recalled for reserve
Reading: Poems in The Lost Lunar Baedeker ed. Roger L. Conover, including "Parturition," "Three Moments in Paris," "The Effectual Marriage," "Songs to Joannes." Include Conover's Introduction, and Editorial Guidelines; do not forget to read the notes to each poem. Critical Readings:
(Critical reading: summary of one of the following three) Eric Murphy Selinger, "Love in the Time of Melancholia," in Mina Loy: Woman and Poet, ed. Maeera Shreiber and Keith Tuma. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1998: 19-43. recalled for reserve Rachel Blau DuPlessis, ""Seismic Orgasm': Sexual Intercourse and Narrative Meaning in Mina Loy," in Mina Loy: Woman and Poet, ed. Maeera Shreiber and Keith Tuma. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1998: 45-74. recalled for reserve Maeera Shreiber, "'Love is a Lyric/ of Bodies': The Negative Aesthetics of Mina Loy's Love Songs to Joannes" in Mina Loy: Woman and Poet, ed. Maeera Shreiber and Keith Tuma. Orono: National Poetry Foundation, 1998: 87-109. recalled for reserve February 13 Institutions of Poetic Practice: Manifestoes--and their Genders Reading: Loy, "Feminist Manifesto," "Aphorisms on Futurism," in The Lost Lunar Baedeker Pound/ Wyndham
Lewis, BLAST (materials). On library shelf in stacks, for use
in library only at AP4 B62X Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant-Guerre, and the Language of Rupture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986. "Chapter 3: Violence and Precision: The Manifesto as Art Form": 80-115. On reserve Peter Nicholls, Modernisms: A Literary Guide. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. From "Chapter 5: A Metaphysics of Modernity: Marinetti and Italian Futurism": 84-92. Janet Lyon, Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern. Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1999. "Chapter 4: Modernists and Gatekeeping Manifestoes: Pound, Loy, and Modern Sanctions": 124-167. On reserve now (Critical reading summary of one of the three critical works, above) February
20 Alice Notley visits. With her permission, and with the tech assistance of a student, we will makes plans to tape this. Check whether there is a Dictionary of Literary Biography article on Notley. Temple's Contemporary Culture Collection owns some work of Notley; in library only. February 27 Theoretical interlude and recapitulation. Margaret Homans, Women Writers and Poetic Identity: Dorothy Wordsworth, Emily Bronte, and Emily Dickinson. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. "Introduction" and "Chapter I: The Masculine Tradition":3-11 and 12-40. on reserve now Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. New York: Methuen, 1987. "Finding Feminist Readings: Dante-Yeats": 15-29. Recalled for reserve Barbara Johnson, A World of Difference. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. "Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion": 184-199. On reserve now Svetlana Boym, Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. from "The 'Poetess': Lack, Excess and Aesthetic Obscenity": 192-200. On reserve now Barrett Watten,
"What I See in 'How I Became Hettie Jones,'" Poetics
Journal 10 (June 1998): 98-121. On reserve. (March 6-Spring Break, no class) Be working on your paper plan. After Spring Break, give me a letter that outlines your research plans of one long paper or plans for two shorter papers. One page list of a hypothesis, issues evoked that seem important, questions, texts, close reading cues or prompts, critical models, some bibliography. March 13
Charles Olson and Gender
Reading Charles Bernstein, "Introjective Verse" (1996), My Way; Speeches and Poems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999: 110-113. Will provide by Xerox Rachel Blau
DuPlessis, "Manifests" (1996), Diacritics 26, 3/4 (Fall-Winter
1996): 31, 34-53. On reserve now Reading: Letters between Olson and Robert Creeley; letters between Olson and Frances Boldereff. Focus on materials that can be located at the dates that the essays (above) were being composed. Olson-Creeley in Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, ed. George Butterick. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, in 8 volumes from 1980 to 1987. In library use only in the Contemporary Culture Collection PS 3529 L655Z544 Olson-Boldereff in Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff: A Modern Correspondence. Ed. Ralph Maud and Sharon Thesen. Hanover: Wesleyan U.P., 1999. Read in this book, including Introduction (by Sharon Thesen), and pp. 13-15 (Primer of Morals for Medea). Library does not own-will arrange somehow. March 27
Charles Olson and Ideologies of Masculinity
Tom Clark, Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet's Life. NY: W.W. Norton, 1991. Chapters 12-14. on reserve now Sherman Paul. Olson's Push: Origin, Black Mountain and Recent American Poetry. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1978. "On the Way to the Fathers": 31-66. on reserve now {{SEE REVISION
TO SYLLABUS English 970: 01 Ideas and Forms in Literature Assignment
Update April 3: Anne Waldman's Long Poem, Gender and Genre Reading: Anne Waldman, IOVIS. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 1993. (Note: There is a IOVIS, Book II-also from Coffee House Press, 1997.) Ancillary Reading Waldman, "Feminafesto." From Kill or Cure. New York: Penguin Books, 1994, 142-146. (Xerox, already handed out) Waldman, "Rocky Flats: Warring God Charnel Ground." Disembodied Poetics: Annals of the Jack Kerouac School. Ed. Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994: 482-490. (Xerox provided) Waldman, "Go-Between Between." TS courtesy of Anne Waldman. Some in Kill or Cure. (Xerox provided) Waldman, "'I Is Another': Dissipative Structures." In Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996. (Xerox coming) Ed Foster and Anne Waldman, "An Interview with Anne Waldman," Talisman 13 (Fall 1994/ Winter 1995): 62-78. (Xerox provided) Alice Notley, "Iovis Omnia Plena," Chicago Review 44 (1998): 117-129. (Xerox provided) Other Resources CD: Waldman, "Alchemical Elegy, Selected Songs and Writings."
For "two-paper
option" students: paper 1 is due today. Critical Reading
(no summary): Other Reading:
Algernon Charles Swinburne, "The Complaint of Lisa"
(Double Sestina). The Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne: Poems.
Philadelphia, David McKay, Publisher [n.d.]. Will provide by Xerox}} Critical Reading
(no summary): Lynn Keller, Forms of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997. "Introduction: Pushing the Limits of Genre and Gender: Women's Long Poems as Forms of Expansion": 1-22. On reserve now Adrienne Rich, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision" (1971). On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978. NY: W. W. Norton, 1979. See also the original ending of that essay. Recalled for reserve April 17 Ted Berrigan, Sonnets and The Poetic Career Reading: The Sonnets (1964/ 2000) Critical Reading
(no summary): Jan Montefiore, Feminism and Poetry: Language, Experience, Identity in Women's Writing. London: Pandora, 1987. From "Chapter 4: Two Way Mirrors: Psychoanalysis and the Love-Sonnet," 97-115. Filed locate slip April 24
Long papers due; second shorter papers due.
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