The below is a course sketch, not a fully realized syllabus. It provides information about the pedagogical approach and primary texts the course would propose to cover.
This course is organized by decades in order to facilitate the study of the social and political contexts in which certain poetries emerged. Because this course covers recent history, this organization enables some immediate understanding of the nature of the syllabus (which would not be the case, for example, if organizing it by poetic schools with which students new to poetry might not be familiar) at the same time that it seeks to challenge some of their stereotypes about recent decades whose styles continue to be relentlessly sampled and parodied today. Furthermore, by avoiding dividing the syllabus into “Beats” and “New York School” and “Black Arts” etc., we are able to study poetries together that existed in conversation with one another at the time of their publications and performances. We’ll selected works by many authors, in order to attempt to get a broad exposure to the kinds of poetries circulating in each decade. Additionally, as one can see, we won’t stick religiously to the dates of the decades nor to the publication dates of books, but rather to the spirits of each.
This course will draw heavily on the excellent resources available online via Penn Sound, the Buffalo Electronic Poetry Center, and UBU, in order to bring into the classroom performed, concrete, and digital poetries as they were meant to be experienced. We will further supplement our study with essays by poets, and will also begin class each day with a television or movie clip that reminds of some element of the cultural reality of the decade at hand. Listed below are the works from which selected poems will be studied. A course reader containing the poems selected from each book will be available.
Weeks 1-3, 1950s: The cooked and the uncooked
Robert Lowell Life Studies (1959)
Elizabeth Bishop North and South (1947)
Allen Ginsberg Howl (1956)
Charles Olson Maximus Poems (1960)
Frank O’Hara Lunch Poems (1964)
Weeks 4-7, 1960s: Say it loud
Jackson Mac Low The Pronouns (1964)
Robert Creeley Pieces (1968)
Sylvia Plath Ariel (1965)
Amiri Baraka Black Magic (1969)
John Berryman 77 Dream Songs (1965)
John Giorno Dial-a-Poem project (1969)
Allen Ginsberg Wichita Vortex Sutra (1967)
Ted Berrigan The Sonnets (1967)
Weeks 8-11, 1970s: Transitions
Adrienne Rich Diving into the Wreck (1973)
John Ashbery Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror (1975)
Ron Silliman Tjanting (1981)
Lyn Hejinian My Life (1980)
David Antin Talking (1972)
Weeks 12-13, 1980s: Language Language Language
Charles Bernstein and Bruce Andrews, The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book (1984)
Weeks 14-15, 1990s: New Formalisms and a Return to Spoken Words
Rebel Angels: 25 Poets of the New Formalism (1996)
Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café (1994)
Week 16, 2000s: A Digital Age
Selected Flarf poems
Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries (http://www.yhchang.com/)