pOeTRY

1.   listen to audio introduction to chapter 2.1 & 2.2 (week 3): link to audio [ transcript] [Wallace Stevens, "Gray Room," a poem discussed in the audio introduction: link to text]  
2. read "imagism briefly defined": link  
3. read H.D.'s "Sea Rose": link to text  
4.   watch video on H.D.'s "Sea Rose": link to video  
5. read H.D.'s "Sea Poppies": link to text  
6.   watch video on H.D.'s "Sea Poppies": link to video  
7. read Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro": link to text  
8. read Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" as it appeared in Poetry magazine: link to archive  
9. read a selection of critical commentary on "In a Station of the Metro": link to text  
10.   watch video on Pound's "In a Station of the Metro": link to video  
11. read Ezra Pound's "The Encounter": link to text  
12.   watch video on Pound's "The Encounter": link to video  
13. read Wallace Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird": link to text  
14.   listen to a discussion of Stevens's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird": link to audio  
15.   take ModPo quiz 3.1: link to quiz 

chapter 2.2 (week 3 continued): Williams

Sunday, September 22 at 9 AM through Sunday, September 29 at 9 AM, continued. Now in the second of four parts of our chapter on the rise of modernism, we take a closer look at William Carlos Williams (1883-1963). We met Williams as a "Whitmanian" in chapter 1, the middle figure in a poetic line running from Whitman to Ginsberg. But that focus on him was a little misleading. The Williams of the late 1910s and 1920s was a poet fascinated by currents of formal experimentation - imagism, yes, but also dadaism, cubism (especially drawing on innovations and painting) and, a little later, objectivism. It's not the purpose of this course that we learn what all these -isms mean. Rather, let's start with a few poems by Williams that befit the imagist moment, and go from there. Quickly we'll find that Williams (always aesthetically restless) was interested in a writing that might capture the dynamism of its modern subject matter and was (mostly) willing to face problems created by traditional approaches to description and portraiture. When these conventions seemed to him to fail, he was prepared to include such failure in the poem itself - disclosing the troubled process of representation. 

1. read William Carlos Williams's "Lines": link to text  
2.   watch video on Williams's "Lines": link to video  
3. read William Carlos Williams's "Between Walls": link to text  
4A.   listen to Williams reading "Between Walls": link to PennSound  
4B.   read/listen with text-audio alignment to Williams's "Between Walls": link to PennSound  
5.   listen to PoemTalk discussion of "Between Walls": link to notes, link to audio  
6.   watch video on "Between Walls": link to video  
7. read William Carlos Williams's "This Is Just to Say": link to text  
8. read Flossie Williams's reply to "This Is Just to Say": link to text  
9.   listen to William Carlos Williams's explanation of "This Is Just to Say": link to audio  
10A.   listen to five recordings of Williams reading "This Is Just to Say": link to recordings  
10B.   listen to five recordings of Williams reading "This Is Just to Say" as text-audio alignment: link to PennSound  
11.   watch video on Williams's "This Is Just to Say": link to video  
12. read William Carlos Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow": link to text  
13A.   listen to four recordings of Williams reading "The Red Wheelbarrow": link to recordings  
13B.   listen to five recordings of Williams reading "The Red Wheelbarrow" as text-audio alignment: link to PennSound  
14.   watch video on Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow": link to video  
15.   watch a museum-goer's video of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" on display at SFMOMA: link to video  
16.   watch video discussion on Duchamp's "Fountain": link to video  
17. read William Carlos Williams, "The rose is obsolete": link to text  
18.   listen to a 6-minute audio mini-lecture on "The rose is obsolete": link to audio  
19. read William Carlos Williams, "Portrait of a Lady": link to text  
20.   listen to three recordings of Williams reading "Portrait of a Lady": 1, 2,  3  
21.   watch video on Williams's "Portrait of a Lady": link to video  
22. look at Marcel Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase": link to image  
23.   watch video on "Nude Descending a Staircase": link to video  
24.   take ModPo quiz 3.2: link to quiz

chapter 2.3 (week 4): Stein

Sunday, September 29 at 9 AM through Sunday, October 6 at 9 AM. Gertrude Stein's contribution to modernist poetry and poetics cannot be overstated, so now, in the third section of chapter 2 we turn to her, spending the better part of week 4 in our course on a selection of her supposedly "difficult" writings. The difficulty of deriving any sort of conventional semantic meaning from the short prose-poems that comprise Tender Buttons turns out to be, for many readers, a helpful inducement to read forother kinds of signifying. As we hope you'll see from the video discussions in this section, such difficulty need not excuse us from close reading. Stein's poems really can be interpreted. They might eschew representation, but by no means do they turn away from reference. The hard work you do in this part of chapter 2 will be amply rewarded when we get to chapter 9. Stein is a particular influence on John Ashbery in chapter 8, but she is an important influence on nearly every poet we'll read in chapter 9. As a matter of fact, here in chapter 2 we have a chance to listen to Jackson Mac Low (a chapter 9 poet) talk about why he finds Stein's opaque and difficult Tender Buttons so nonetheless meaningful. And we hear Joan Retallack (another chapter 9 poet) paying homage to Stein's "Composition as Explanation." 

 During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There is also a writing assignment due. Writing assignment #2 should be submitted any time between 9 AM on 9/30/12 and 9 AM on 10/6/12; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 10/7/13 and 9 AM on 10/13/13. There is also a livewebcast on Wednesday, October 2 at noon (eastern time) - a discussion of Stein's "Tender Buttons" with special guests Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, and Rachel Blau DuPlessis.

1.  listen to audio introduction to chapter 2.3 & 2.4 (week 4): link to audio (17 mins.) [ transcript] 
2. read Stein's "A Long Dress" from Tender Buttons: link to text [scroll down or control-F to search] 
3.  watch video on Stein's "A Long Dress": link to video 
4. read Marjorie Perloff's comment on Stein and in particular on "A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass": link to text 
5. read Gertrude Stein, "A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass," from the "Objects" section of Tender Buttons: link to the text 
5A.  listen to Jackson Mac Low's 1978 reading of Stein's "A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass": link to PennSound 
5B.  listen to Jackson Mac Low's commentary on Tender Buttons: link to PennSound 
6.  watch video on Stein's "A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass": link to video 
7. read Stein's "Water Raining" and "Malachite" from Tender Buttons: link to text [scroll down or search] 
8.  watch video on Stein's "Water Raining" and "Malachite": link to video 
8A.  watch (optional) video discussion of Tender Buttons: link to video, part 1 (29 mins.), part 2 (29 mins.)
9. read Stein on narrative: link 

10. read Stein on the noun: link 
11. read Stein on loving repeating: link 
12. read Stein on composition: link 
13.  listen to Joan Retallack reading some "propositions" from Stein's "Composition as Explanation": link to audio 
14.  watch video on Stein's ideas about narrative, composition, repeating & nouns: link to video 
15. read Gertrude Stein's "Let Us Describe": link to text [note: scroll to bottom of that page], image of text 
16.  watch video on Gertrude Stein's "Let Us Describe": link to video 
17. read Stein's "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso" and Ulla Dydo's comment: link to text 
18A.  listen to Stein perform "If I Told Him": link to PennSound 
18B.  read/listen with text-audio alignment of Stein's "If I Told Him": link to PennSound 
19.  watch video of dance choreographed to Stein's "If I Told Him": link to video 
20.  listen to Marjorie Perloff speaking about Stein's portraits: link to audio 
21.  watch video on Stein's "If I Told Him": link to video 
22.  take ModPo quiz 4.1: link to quiz