English 358W-01 Modern
Poetry Mr. Kirby-Smith
January 13, Mon: Introduction
January 15, Wed: Poems of A. E. Housman
January 17, Fri: Introduction to Yeats: read Adam’s Curse,No Second Troy, September 1913
January 20, Mon Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
January 22, Wed: Yeats: A Coat, The Wild Swans at Coole, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, Easter 1916, The Second Coming PAPER DUE: 500-word minimum comparing and contrasting Yeats’s “An Irish Airman Foresees his death” with one or more of Housman’s poems about a young man’s death. How do the poems differ in tone, style, emphasis?
January 24 Fri:Yeats: A Prayer for My Daughter, Leda and the Swan,
Sailing to
January 27 Mon: Yeats:
January 29 Wed:Ezra Pound: all poems up to The Cantos.; 400-500 word paper due: What do you make of Gertrude Stein’s poems?
January 31 Fri: Pound: The Cantos
February 3 Mon: Stein
February 5 Wed:Test on all poems and poets covered to this point
February 7 Fri: Frost: Mending Wall, After Apple-Picking, The Road Not Taken, Birches, Fire and Ice
February 10 Mon: Frost: Stopping By Woods, Provide, Provide, The Gift Outright:paper due on a poem by Frost that will be assigned: 600-800 words
February 12 Wed:
February 14 Fri: Wallace Stevens:
Sunday Morning, Peter Quince,
February 17 Mon: Stevens: The Emperor of Ice-Cream, The Idea of Order
at
February 19 Wed: William Carlos Williams: All poems except selections from
February 21 Fri:
February 24 Mon: All poems by H. D.
February 26 Wed: All poems by Edith Sitwell
February 28 Fri: Marianne Moore: all poems; 600-800 word paper due: a comparison/contrast of one poem each by H. D., Sitwell, and Moore
March 3 Mon:
March 5 Wed :John Crowe Ransom: Bells’s for John Whiteside’s Daughter, Here Lies a Lady, Blue Girls, The Equilibrists
March 7 Fri: catch-up
March 8,Saturday Instruction ends for Spring Break
March 17, Mon:T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Gerontion, The
March 19, Wed: Eliot,
March 21, Fri: Eliot: Little Gidding
March 24 Mon:Test on all poets and poems since the last test
March 26 Wed: Claude McKay all poems
March 28 Fri: Wilfred Owen: all poems
March 31 Mon: e.e. cummings: all poems
April 2 Wed: continue discussion of cummings
April 4 Fri:Hart Crane: Chaplinesque,
Voyages I and II, Proem: To
April 7 Mon:Crane continued; Allen Tate: Ode to the Confederate Dead
April 9 Wed: Yvor Winters: all poems
April 11 Fri: Langston Hughes video shown
April 14 Mon: Langston Hughes video completed; all poems by Hughes; 600-800 word paper due on topics to be supplied.
April 16 Wed: reading from papers; discussion of Hughes continued.
April
18, Friday Spring
April 21 Mon:W. H Auden: Lullaby, Musee des Beaux Arts, In Memory of W. B. Yeats;
April 23 Wed: Auden:In Praise of Limestone, Their Lonely Betters
April 25 Fri: Stephen Spender: The Express, The Landscape...;
April 28 Mon:Dylan Thomas: The Force . . ., Fern Hill, Do Not Go Gentle
April 30 Wed: Catch-up
May 2 Fri: A Look Backward: Edwin Arlington Robinson: Luke Havergal, Mr. Flood’s Party, Eros Turannos
May 5 Mon: A Look Forward: Samuel Beckett
May 7, Wednesday Reading Day
Final
examination: Monday, May
The first half of the final examination will be a test on poets read since the last test. The second half will be a choice of essay questions covering Modern Poetry.
Written assignments are to be finished pieces of writing, neatly typed, with margins and with lines double-spaced. The assignments should be revised so as to correct grammar, usage, and punctuation. For guidelines, please see William Strunk’s Elements of Style, a free copy of which can be found on the Internet at this address: http://www.bartleby.com/141/index.html (You can also get there via my web site, the address for which is: http://www.uncg.edu/~htkirbys/ Click on “sites helpful to students” there).
Tests will consist of short quotations from poems covered in the course. All such passages will be given special attention in class. To get any credit for any question, you must correctly identify the poet who wrote it, just to start with. Some students have found that a good way to review for these tests is to xerox the poems covered and cut up the xerox copies to make flash cards, with comments on the poems on the back of the cards or sheets (and with the poet’s name removed from the passage, of course.)
Grading will be approximately 50% on the tests and final examination, and 50% on the other written work. Extra credit will be awarded for regular class attendance, careful preparation, and class participation.
Every test and every writing assignment
will be graded promptly, but you must
come to my office, second floor of the
Regular class attendance is expected. Anyone who misses no more than three classes in the semester, for any reason, will be allowed a grade bonus on the final grade, changing a C+ to a B-, for example. Anyone forced to miss more than three classes will just have to study harder. Any student who has failed more than one test or assignment, and who has missed more than one class out of four up to that point without a written excuse, will be dropped from the course. This includes the opening class meetings of the semester.
You are expected to get to class on time. Please adjust your schedule so as to make this possible. Repeated late arrival will count as absences. When in class, you are expected to pay attention and not to do anything to distract anyone else from paying attention. Distracting or disruptive behavior of any kind is grounds for being dropped from the course.
Student learning goals and “outcome”: At the completion of the course, the student will be able to:
--understand the historical development and the cultural context of modern poetry in English
--write clearly and coherently about modern poetry
--appreciate the great variety of poetic developments in the earlier twentieth century
--name the more important poets writing in English in the period 1890-1945, and their more important works
--understand the context out of which contemporary poetry has developed