Introduction to Twentieth-Century Global Poetry



Contemporary World Poetry

Spring 2012

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you

really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

—Allen Ginsberg

01:195:384

Professor Lauren Fanelli

lfanelli11@

MW 2:15 pm-3:35 pm

Hickman 218

Office Hours: Wed, 12:30 pm-1:30 pm, Au Bon Pain, or by appointment

Mailbox: Program in Comparative Literature, 195 College Avenue, New Brunswick Campus



Sakai Course Site:

Course Description:

What are the boundaries and borders of language? Of poetry? Of craft? In this course we will examine contemporary works of poetry, prose-poems, and essays in translation by poets from around the world in order to gain a keen understanding of how voices and experiences resonate and/or individuate cross-culturally, and how our own social, political, and cultural locations influence our readings of such texts. We will investigate such themes as violence and war, death, birth, alienation, racism, feminism, and nationhood, and read poems in both free verse and forms, such as ghazal, villanelle, sestina, sonnet, and haiku. We will also consider the ways in which translation affects both the transliteration of texts and their interpretations by non-native speakers by questioning what is lost and what is gained in the process of linguistic exchange. Finally, we will strive to unravel the myths of poetry and its image as an impenetrable medium and address the unique ways in which poetry can and has healed, revived, and revolutionized the world.

Learning Goals:

■ To read poetry and related literary works critically and carefully

■ To consider the ways in which translation influences our reading and understanding of texts

■ To develop clear, persuasive, and well-supported papers

■ To confidently, respectfully, and creatively participate in an intellectual

community

Requirements:

■ Weekly attendance and class participation (15%)

■ One 3-5 page midterm paper (20%)

■ One 5-7 page final paper (35%)

■ Weekly journal entries. These entries can be flexible but must pertain to the readings for that week: they can be responses to the texts, observations about a poet or poem, questions, or even entries of original poetry. Journals will be collected twice throughout the semester: once in the middle, and once at the end. Note that students are expected to write every week (20%)

■ 7-10-minute oral presentation. By no means are the poets examined in this course exhaustive or the sole representatives of their countries of origin. Therefore, each student will choose a poet outside of the United States at the beginning of the semester to research, and will present to the class a short summary of his/her biographical information, publications, relevant historical influences (if any), and one notable poem of your choosing which the class will discuss (10%)

Grading Rubric:

A (90-100), B+ (87-89), B (80-86), C+ (75-79), C (70-74) , D (60-69), F (59 and below)

Final grades are non-negotiable unless you can prove that I have made a mathematical error in calculating the grade. There is no extra credit available in this course.

Course Policies:

■ Weekly attendance is mandatory. Any more than two excused absences will be reflected in the final grade.

■ No laptops or cell phones should be used or turned on during class.

■ Late assignments are NOT accepted. If you anticipate a problem turning in any one of the assignments on time, please talk to me in advance. All assignments (excluding the journals) should be emailed to me as a Word attachment by 5:00 pm on the day that they are due. Journals should be submitted at the beginning of class on the days they are due.

■ All papers should be submitted on white, 8 ½ “x 11” paper, double-spaced, with 1” margins on all sides and composed in 12-point Times New Roman font.

■ For all citations, please refer to the MLA formatting and style guide:

■ If you have questions/comments about a grade, please set up an appointment to come see me. No inquiries about grades over email will be answered.

■ Students with disabilities requesting accommodations must follow the procedures outlined at

Attendance Policy:

Students are expected to attend all classes; if you expect to miss one or two classes, please use the University absence reporting website to indicate the date and reason for your absence.  An email is automatically sent to me.  

Please note that any more than two unexcused absences will be reflected by the lowering of your final grade. Excused absences will be granted for the observance of religious holidays, family emergencies, athletic practices/games, etc. Please make sure to let me know in advance of your inability to attend class for these reasons.

Papers:

Papers should be a close, comparative, and critical reading of a set of poems and texts. They should exhibit a clear thesis and provide supporting passages from the text to demonstrate a persuasive analysis and understanding of the materials. DO NOT SUMMARIZE WHAT YOU ARE READING. Think about an angle of interest that you’d like to pursue and do a close reading of the poems/text to support your ideas.

The papers do not require outside research. Three to four prompts will be provided for both papers, though you should feel free to explore another idea that interests you. If you would like to pursue a topic that isn’t covered in the prompts, please consult me well in advance of the paper due date.

The final paper should compare two or more poems/texts and demonstrate a mastery of the Program in Comparative Literature’s Learning Goals:

A. Students will demonstrate familiarity with a variety of world literatures as well as methods of studying literature and culture across national and linguistic boundaries and evaluate the nature and function and value of literature from a global perspective.

B. Students will analyze a specific body of research and write a clear and well-developed paper or project about a topic related to more than one literary and cultural tradition. This paper should situate the texts in their differing historical and cultural contexts.

C. Students will demonstrate competency in one foreign language and at least a basic knowledge of the literature written in that language.

Please note that an A-range paper explains and interprets the material in an original way. A B-range paper explains and interprets the material. A C-range paper clearly presents and summarizes ideas in the text(s). A D-range paper presents an unclear argument and does not summarize ideas in the text(s). An F-range paper has no argument and/or does not refer to the text(s).

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work and will not be tolerated. If you have any questions on what constitutes plagiarism please see me for specific details, or check out these tutorials online:

Recommended Plagiarism Tutorials online

1. Take a 20 minute interactive-tutorial on Plagiarism and Academic Integrity,



2. For another view, use the Camden Plagiarism Tutorial

3. Consult Don't Plagiarize: Document Your Research! for tips about how to take notes so that you don't plagiarize by accident.



For more information on Rutgers’ policy on academic integrity, visit:



Violations include: cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, denying others access to information or material, and facilitating violations of academic integrity.

Required Texts:

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet, trans. M.D. Herter Norton. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993. [9780393310399]

The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry (3rd Edition), eds. Jahan Ramazani, Richard Ellman, Robert O’Clair. New York: Norton, 2003. [9780393977912]

Schedule:

Jan 18: Introductions

Jan. 23: Poets on Poetry, or How to Read with New Eyes

“Poetic Manifesto”/Dylan Thomas from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“The Poet and the World: Nobel Lecture 1996,” /Wislawa Szymborska from Poems New and Collected [Sakai]

“Poetry”/ Marianne Moore, from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“Of Modern Poetry” Wallace Stevens from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens [Sakai]

“A Poet”/ Thomas Hardy from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

Jan. 25: Letters to a Young Poet (pgs 1-78) / Ranier Maria Rilke

“Letters to a Young Poet” Adrienne Rich from Midnight Salvage [Sakai]

“Poets Obligation,” “Poetry”/Pablo Neruda from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry [Sakai]

Jan. 30: Translation

“On Translating Celan” from Poems of Paul Celan/Michael Hamburger [Sakai]

“Arabic,” “Beyond English”/ Agha Shahid Ali from Call me Ishmael Tonight [Sakai]

“My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop,” “The Words Under the Words” /Naomi Shihab Nye from 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East [Sakai]

“My Faithful Mother Tongue”/Czeslaw Milosz from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry [Sakai]

Feb. 1: Crossing Borders

“Notes from a Trip to Russia”/Audre Lorde from Sister Outsider [Sakai]

“Touring”/Audre Lorde from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde [Sakai]

“By Exiles,” “Land,” “Of it All,” /Agha Shahid Ali from Call Me Ishmael Tonight [Sakai]

“Arrival at Santos,” “Questions of Travel”/Elizabeth Bishop from The Complete Poems [Sakai]

Feb. 6: Nationhood

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Why Jerusalem?” /Yehuda Amichai from Open Closed Open [Sakai]

“Spain, Take This Chalice From Me” /César Vallejo from ‘Spain, Take This Chalice From Me’ and Other Poems (Bilingual Edition) [Sakai]

“Song on the Census of the People of Nigeria” /Hajiya ‘Yar Shehu from Muslim Women Sing [Sakai]

”The Mythical Founding of Buenos Aires” /Jorge Luis Borges from Selected Poems [Sakai]

Feb. 8: Racism

“A Poem for Black Hearts”/Amiri Baraka from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Facing It”/Yusef Komunyaka from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Slim in Atlanta”/ Sterling Brown from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Theme for English B”“Dream Boogie: Variation,” “Song for a Dark Girl,” “Harlem”/Langston Hughes from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

Feb. 13:

“Those Winter Sundays,” “Night, Death, Mississippi”/Robert Hayden from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Telephone Conversation”/ Wole Soyinka from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“A Cry from Africa”/ Derek Walcott from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till”/Gwendolyn Brooks from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“The House Slave”/Rita Dove from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“How to Write the Great American Indian Novel”/Sherman Alexie from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

Feb. 15: Love

“Body of a Woman,” “Tonight I Can Write”/Pablo Neruda from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (Bilingual Edition) [Sakai]

“One Art”/ Elizabeth Bishop from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“The Years from You to Me” /Paul Celan from Poems of Paul Celan [Sakai]

“Anticipation of Love”/ Jorge Luis Borges from Selected Poems [Sakai]

“Circe’s Torment”/Louise Gluck from Meadowlands [Sakai]

Feb. 20: Violence and War

“Ode to the Confederate Dead”/ Allan Tate from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“For the Union Dead”/ Robert Lowell from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“O Captain! My Captain!” “Dirge for Two Veterans” /Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass [Sakai]

“The Death of a Soldier”/ Wallace Stevens from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens [Sakai]

Feb. 22: “Starvation Camp Near Jaslo,” “The End and the Beginning” /Wislawa Szymborska from New and Collected Poems [Sakai]

“Babiy Yar” /Yevgeny Yevtushenko from Selected Poems [Sakai]

“Prologue”/ Anna Akhmatova from Poems of Akhmatova [Sakai]

“Elegy for the Time at Hand”/ Adonis [Sakai]

“From In Time of War”/W.H. Auden from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

Feb. 27: Death

Elegies 1 & 2/Rainer Maria Rilke from Duino Elegies [Sakai]

“Wanting to Die,” “The Truth the Dead Know,” “Sylvia’s Death”/Anne Sexton from The Complete Poems [Sakai]

“Lady Lazarus,” “Cut”/Sylvia Plath from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

Feb. 29: “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”/Dylan Thomas from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Small Variation”/Octavio Paz from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry [Sakai]

“From Kaddish”/Allen Ginsberg from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

March 5: In-Class Writing Workshop; journals will be collected

March 7: Birth

“Persephone Falling,” “The Search,” “Protection,” “Persephone Abducted,” “”Mother Love” /Rita Dove from Mother Love [Sakai]

“Night Feeding”/ Muriel Rukeyser from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Now That I Am Forever With Child” /Audre Lorde from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Poem to My Uterus” /Lucille Clifton from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

March 8-17: SPRING BREAK

***MIDTERM PAPERS DUE*** [March 19th]

March 19: Feminism

“Poetry Is Not a Luxury” from Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches/ Audre Lorde [Sakai]

“The Ache of Marriage”/Denise Levertov from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage”/Robert Lowell from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Her Kind”/ Anne Sexton from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed”/ Edna St. Vincent Millay from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

March 21: “Feminist Manifesto”/Mina Loy from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“If Being Man” “To an Emancipated Woman”/ Dacia Maraini from Devour Me Too [Sakai]

“Diving into the Wreck,” “Power”/ Adrienne Rich from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Song for the Women of Nigeria”/ Binta Katsina from Muslim Women Sing [Sakai]

“Song for Self-Sufficiency” /Hauwa Gwaram from Muslim Women Sing [Sakai]

March 26: Alienation

“I felt a funeral in my Brain”/Emily Dickinson from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“Family Portrait” /Carlos Drummond de Andrade from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry [Sakai]

“Identity Card”/Mahmoud Darwish from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry [Sakai]

“In the Waiting Room”/Elizabeth Bishop from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

March 28: Experimentation/Form

“A Retrospect” (pgs. 929-933)/Ezra Pound from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“Potrait d’une Femme”/Ezra Pound (translation of Rihaku) from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“From Tender Buttons: From Objects”/ Gertrude Stein from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

Myung Mi Kim from Dura [Sakai]

April 2:

“Some Notes on Organic Form”/Denise Levertov from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“A Time Past”/Denise Levertov from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This Is Just to Say”/ William Carlos Williams from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“[in Just -]”, “[O sweet spontaneous]”/E.E. Cummings from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“Poem Made from a Newspaper Item”/Manuel Bandeira from Selected Poems [Sakai]

“Fair Use”/Alice Fulton from Felt [Sakai]

“Hurricane Katrina Haiku”/Derrick Weston Brown [Sakai]

“Sestina”/Elizabeth Bishop from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

April 4: Pleasure

“Wild Nights—Wild Nights”/Emily Dickinson from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“Pleasure”/A.K. Ramanujan from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry [Sakai]

“The Pope’s Penis,” “Once”/Sharon Olds from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Penelope’s Song”/Louise Gluck from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Request”/ Shuntaro Tanikawa from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry

April 9: Student presentations

April 11: Student presentations

April 16: Student presentations

April 18: Memory

“Piano”/ D.H. Lawrence from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry

“All Time is Past Time”/ Ruth Stone from Who Is the Widow’s Muse? [Sakai]

“The Cold Outside,” “One of the Last Days”/ Marie Howe from What the Living Do [Sakai]

“A Time Past”/Denise Levertov from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

“Forget What Did”/Philip Larkin from The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry

April 23: Hope

“Corona”/Paul Celan from Poems of Paul Celan [Sakai]

“Nest”/Louise Gluck from Vita Nova [Sakai]

“The Word”/Pablo Neruda [Sakai]

“Blessing the Boats”/Lucille Clifton from Quilting [Sakai]

*Journals collected

April 25: In-Class Writing Workshop

April 30: Final papers due, final thoughts, open mic

Excerpted Texts:

Akhmatova, Anna. Poems of Akhmatova, trans. Stanley Kunitz. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.

Ali, Agha Shahid. Call Me Ishmael Tonight. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.

Amichai, Yehuda. The Selected Poems of Yehuda Amichai, trans. Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Borges, Jorge. Selected Poems, trans. Maria Kodama, Willis Barnstone, Alexander Coleman, Stephen Kessler, Eric McHenry, W.S. Merwin, Hoyt Rogers, Charles Tomlinson. New York: Penguin Books USA, 2000.

Celan, Paul. Poems of Paul Celan (Bilingual Edition), trans. Michael Hamburger. New York: Persea Books, 2002.

Clifton, Lucille. Quilting. Rochester: BOA Editions, 1991.

Gluck, Louise. Meadowlands. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Gluck, Louise. Vita Nova. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

Lorde, Audre. Coal. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.

Lorde, Audre. “Notes from a Trip to Russia,” “Poetry Is Not A Luxury.” Sister Outsider. Freedom: The Crossing Press, 1984.

Maraini, Dacia. Devour Me Too, trans. Genni Donati Gunn. Montreal: Guernica, 1987.

Muslim Women Sing: Hausa Popular Song, Beverly B. Mack, ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Nye, Naomi Shihab. 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Rich, Adrienne. Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems. New York: Mariner Books, 1981.

Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Knopf, 2002.

Stone, Ruth. Who Is the Widow’s Muse? Cambridge: Yellow Moon Press, 1991.

Szymborska, Wislawa. Poems New and Collected, trans. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh. New York: Harcourt, 1998.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, ed. J.D. McClatchy. New York: Vintage, 1996.

Vallejo, César. ‘Spain, Take This Chalice From Me’ and Other Poems, trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition. New York: Penguin Classics, 1961.

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny. Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition), trans. Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi. New York: Penguin Classics, 2008.

Resources:

1. Epitaph

By William Carlos Williams

An old willow with hollow branches

slowly swayed his few high gright tendrils

and sang:

Love is a young green willow

shimmering at the bare wood's edge.

2. Translation tools:







(Print editions of language dictionaries)

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