UPenn - Modern & Contemporary American Poetry ("ModPo") 

[{"contents":[{"duration":"4","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 1"},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Emily Dickinson's \"I dwell in Possibility\""},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Dickinson's \"Tell all the truth but tell it slant\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion on \"Tell all the truth\""},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Emily Dickinson's \"The Brain within its Groove\" (part 1)"},{"duration":"13","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Emily Dickinson's \"The Brain within its Groove\" (part 2)"},{"duration":"8","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 1"},{"duration":"24","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Walt Whitman's \"Song of Myself\" (part 1)"},{"duration":"21","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Walt Whitman's \u201cSong of Myself\u201d (part 2)"},{"duration":"21","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on canto 47 of \"Song of Myself\""},{"duration":"28","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of Divya Victor's \"W is for Walt Whitman's Soul\""},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridged video on Victor's \"W is for Walt...\""},{"duration":"33","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch Divya Victor discuss \"W is for Walt Whitman's Soul\""},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video discussion of the Whitmanian and Dickinsonian modes"},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an optional further introduction to week 1: audio & transcript"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Emily Dickinson's \u201cI dwell in Possibility\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Al Filreis recite \"I dwell in Possibility\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Dickinson's \"Tell all the truth but tell it slant\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Dickinson's \"The Brain within its Groove\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(optional) watch condensed video on Dickinson's \"Brain within its Groove\""},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read sections 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 14, 47 & 52 of Walt Whitman\u2019s \u201cSong of Myself\u201d"},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to recordings of \u201cSong of Myself\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Al Filreis on canto 8 of \"Song of Myself\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Divya Victor's \"W is for Walt Whitman's Soul"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch or listen to Divya Victor read \"W is for Walt Whitman's Soul\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on \"Possibility\" in Emily Dickinson's \"I dwell in Possibility\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on the dash in Emily Dickinson\u2019s \u201cI dwell in Possibility\u201d"}],"description":"

Week 1 of ModPo 2020 runs from Saturday, September 5 at 9 AM through Sunday, September 13 at 9 AM.<\/strong> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 1 materials are open and available all year. <\/p>

In this first week of our course, we'll encounter two 19th-century American poets whose quite different approaches to verse similarly challenged the official verse culture of the time. As a matter of form (but also of content), Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson were radicals. What sort of radicalism is this? In a way, this course is all about exploring expressions of that radicalism from Whitman and Dickinson to the present day. Such challenges to official verse culture (and often U.S. culture at large) present us with a lineage of ideas about art and expression, a tradition that can be outlined, mostly followed, somewhat traced. In this course, we follow, to the best of our ability \u2014 and given the limits of time \u2014 that tradition and try to make overall sense of it. We will read Divya Victor's \"W Is for Walt Whitman's Soul\" toward the end of week 1 in anticipation of other later responses to Whitman and Dickinson encountered in week 2. <\/p>

You will find that we do this one poem at a time. Here in week 1, we will explore Dickinson first, Whitman second, and then begin to sketch out the major differences between them, which, some say, amount to two opposite ends of the spectrum of poetic experimentalism and dissent in the nineteenth century. Which is to say: on the spectrum of traditional-to-experimental poetry, these two poets are on the same end (experimental); on the spectrum of experimentalism, their approaches can put them on opposite ends. In short, they offer us alternative poetic radicalisms, and their influences down the line (which we will explore in week 2) are both powerful but are also largely distinct. One question you'll be prepared to ask by the end of the course: Is the Dickinsonian or the Whitmanian tradition more ascendant and apt in today's experimental poetry? <\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS<\/strong>: During this week, there are two quizzes due (see below); there are no writing assignments or peer reviews due. There is a live webcast on Wednesday, September 9, 2020, at noon (Philadelphia time).<\/p>","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 1.1 (week 1)\u2014Whitman & Dickinson, two proto-modernists"},{"contents":[{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 2"},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on William Carlos Williams\u2019s \u201cSmell!\u201d"},{"duration":"19","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on William Carlos Williams's \"Danse Russe\""},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Allen Ginsberg's \"A Supermarket in California\""},{"duration":"13","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Lorine Niedecker's \"Grandfather Advised Me\""},{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Lorine Niedecker's \"You are my friend\""},{"duration":"8","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Lorine Niedecker's \"Foreclosure\""},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 2"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Cid Corman's \"It isnt for want\""},{"duration":"21","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Rae Armantrout's \"The Way\""},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on distinctions between \u201cDickinsonian\u201d and \u201cWhitmanian\u201d proto-modernism"},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an optional further introduction to week 2: audio & transcript"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams\u2019s \u201cSmell!\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Williams perform \u201cSmell!\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to \"Smell!\" in text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Williams's \"Danse Russe\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Williams perform \"Danse Russe\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to \u201cDanse Russe\u201d in text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Allen Ginsberg's \u201cA Supermarket in California\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Ginsberg perform \u201cA Supermarket in California\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to Ginsberg's \u201cA Supermarket in California\u201d as text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Lorine Niedecker's \u201cGrandfather advised me\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Lorine Niedecker's \u201cYou are my friend\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Lorine Niedecker's \u201cForeclosure\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Lorine Niedecker perform \u201cForeclosure\u201d"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a 30-minute discussion of \u201cForeclosure\u201d (& another short poem)"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Cid Corman's \"It isnt for want\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Cid Corman perform \u201cIt isnt for want\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Rae Armantrout's \u201cThe Way\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Rae Armantrout perform \u201cThe Way\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Rae Armantrout talk briefly about \u201cThe Way\u201d"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk discussion of \u201cThe Way\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"essay assignment #1"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Niedecker's \"Grandfather advised me\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Corman's \"It isnt for want\""}],"description":"

Week 2 of ModPo 2020 runs from Sunday, September 13 at 9 AM through Sunday, September 20 at 9 AM. <\/b>For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 2 materials are open and available all year.<\/p>

During this week, the second half of chapter 1, we will read the work of two poets writing in the Whitmanian mode and three poets writing in the Dickinsonian mode. We will encounter our \"Whitmanians,\" William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, again later in the course\u2014Williams as a modernist and Ginsberg as a Beat poet. The Whitman\/Williams\/Ginsberg connection is a strong one; Ginsberg wrote directly in response to both Whitman and Williams and saw the lineage as crucial to the development of his approach. Our \"Dickinsonians\" are more disparate in their response to Dickinson\u2019s writing. Of the three\u2014Lorine Niedecker, Cid Corman, and Rae Armantrout\u2014only the last could be said to be a direct poetic descendant of Emily Dickinson's aesthetic. <\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS:<\/b> During this week, there are two quizzes due and a writing assignment. Writing assignment #1 is open for submission between 9 AM on 9\/13\/20 and 9 AM on 9\/20\/20; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 9\/21\/20 and 9 AM on 9\/27\/20. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, September 16, at 3 PM (Philadelphia time).<\/p>","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 1.2 (week 2)\u2014Whitmanians & Dickinsonians "},{"contents":[{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 3"},{"duration":"21","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on H.D.'s \"Sea Rose\""},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Ezra Pound's \"In a Station of the Metro\""},{"duration":"13","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Ezra Pound's \"The Encounter\""},{"duration":"9","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion on \"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird\""},{"duration":"26","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch a discussion of Tonya Foster's haiku (with the poet)"},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch a PoemTalk discussion of Tonya Foster's haiku"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 3"},{"duration":"25","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an optional further introduction to week 3: audio & transcript"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"imagism briefly defined"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read H.D.'s \"Sea Rose\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Ezra Pound's \"In a Station of the Metro\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Pound's \"In a Station of the Metro\" as it appeared in Poetry magazine"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read a selection of critical commentary on \"In a Station of the Metro\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch brief further discussion of Pound's \"In a Station of the Metro\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Ezra Pound's \"The Encounter\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Wallace Stevens's \"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird\""},{"duration":"28","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a discussion of Stevens's \"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read haiku from Tonya Foster's \"A Swarm of Bees in High Court\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"essay #1: write reviews of others' essays"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on \"In a Station of the Metro\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Williams's \"Lines\""},{"duration":"9","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Williams's \"Between Walls\""},{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Williams\u2019s \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d"},{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Williams's \"The Red Wheelbarrow\""},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video discussion on Duchamp\u2019s \u201cFountain\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Williams's \"Portrait of a Lady\""},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Marcel Duchamp's \"Nude Descending a Staircase\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams's \"Lines\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams's \"Between Walls\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Williams reading \"Between Walls\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen with text-audio alignment to Williams's \"Between Walls\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk discussion of \"Between Walls\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams's \"This Is Just to Say\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Flossie Williams's reply to \"This Is Just to Say\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to William Carlos Williams's explanation of \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to five recordings of Williams reading \"This Is Just to Say\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to five recordings of Williams reading \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d as text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams's \"The Red Wheelbarrow\""},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to four recordings of Williams reading \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to four recordings of Williams performing \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d as text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion of Williams\u2019s \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"look at a photograph of Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u201cFountain\u201d at the Philadephia Museum of Art"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch a museum-goer\u2019s video of Duchamp\u2019s \u201cFountain\u201d on display at SFMoMA"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams's, \u201cThe rose is obsolete\u201d"},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a 6-minute close reading of \u201cThe rose is obsolete\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams's, \"Portrait of a Lady\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to 3 recordings of Williams performing \u201cPortrait of a Lady\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"look at Marcel Duchamp\u2019s \u201cNude Descending a Staircase\u201d"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Williams's \"Between Walls\""}],"description":"

Week 3 of ModPo 2020 runs from Sunday, September 20 at 9 AM through Sunday, September 27 at 9 AM.<\/b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 3 materials are open and available all year.<\/p>

Modernism in poetry had many beginnings; imagism marks just one. But in a quick introduction, this brief but influential movement gives us a good place to start. Imagists disliked late Victorian wordiness, flowery figuration, and \u201cbeautiful\u201d abstraction. They rejected such qualities through staunch assertions demanding concision, concentration, precise visuality, and a super-focused emotive objectivity. In this first of four sections of ModPo's chapter 2, we will ask ourselves whether each poem meets the impossible or nearly impossible standards set out by imagist manifestos. If any given poem \u201cfails\u201d to meet such standards, it is by no means a sign of bad poetry. Still, one way to learn about the rise of poetic modernism is to make discernments based on the poets' own (momentary) programmatic demands. At the end of this glimpse at modern poets' radical condensations, we look ahead at the use of haiku by a contemporary poet, Tonya Foster.<\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS:<\/b> During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). This is also the week in which peer reviews of writing assignment #1 are due. Peer reviews should be submitted any time between 9 AM on 9\/21\/20 and 9 AM on 9\/27\/20. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, September 23 at noon (Philadelphia time).<\/p>","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 2.1 (week 3)\u2014the rise of poetic modernism: imagism"},{"contents":[{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 4"},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Stein's \"A Long Dress\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion on \"A Long Dress\""},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Stein's \"A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass\""},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on \"Water Raining\" and \"Malachite\""},{"duration":"22","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Stein's ideas about narrative, composition, repeating & nouns"},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Stein's \"Let Us Describe\""},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Stein's \"If I Told Him\""},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 4"},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an optional further introduction to week 4: audio & transcript"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Stein's \"A Long Dress\" from Tender Buttons"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Marjorie Perloff's comment on Stein and in particular on \"A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Gertrude Stein, \"A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass,\" from the \"Objects\" section of Tender Buttons"},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video of Laynie Browne discussing \"A Carafe\" and the \"Objects\" section of Tender Buttons"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Jackson Mac Low's 1978 performance of Stein's \"A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Jackson Mac Low's close reading of \"A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Stein\u2019s phrase \u201cnot unordered in not resembling\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Stein's \"Water Raining\" and \"Malachite\" from Tender Buttons"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch Bob Perelman on Stein's use of the continuous present tense"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch Ron Silliman on how each Stein poem creates its own definition of reading"},{"duration":"4","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of the pleasure to be gotten from Stein's \u201clinguistic-ness\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Stein on narrative"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Stein on the noun"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Stein on repetition"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Stein on composition"},{"duration":"4","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Joan Retallack reading some propositions from Stein\u2019s \u201cComposition as Explanation\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"condensed version of video on Stein's ideas about narrative, composition & nouns [alternative]"},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion on the noun & loving repeating"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Gertrude Stein's \"Let Us Describe\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Stein\u2019s \u201cIf I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso\u201d"},{"duration":"4","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Stein perform \u201cIf I Told Him\u201d"},{"duration":"4","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen with text-audio alignment of Stein's \"If I Told Him\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch a dance choreographed to Stein's \u201cIf I Told Him\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Ulla Dydo's prefatory comment on \"If I Told Him\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Marjorie Perloff speaking about Stein\u2019s portraits"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"essay assignment #2"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on \"A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass\""},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Tristan Tzara's \"To Make a Dadaist Poem\""},{"duration":"8","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Bishop's \"A Recollection\" and the sonnet in modernism"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven\u2019s \u201cA Dozen Cocktails\u2014Please\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"explore the archived manuscript of \"A Dozen Cocktails\u2014Please\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Williams on the Baroness"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a brief bio of the Baroness"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a passage from Kenneth Rexroth\u2019s account of the Baroness"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Tristan Tzara\u2019s \u201cTo Make a Dadaist Poem\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"re-read Tzara\u2019s \u201cTo Make a Dadaist Poem\u201d in an introduction to \"chance operations\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch a film-illustration of \u201cTo Make a Dadaist Poem\u201d"},{"duration":"7","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read about the sonnet as a form"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read William Carlos Williams on the sonnet"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read John Peale Bishop, \"A Recollection\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Tzara's \"To Make a Dadaist Poem\""}],"description":"

Week 4 of ModPo 2020 runs from Sunday, September 27 at 9 AM through Sunday, October 4 at 9 AM. <\/b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 4 materials are open and available all year.<\/p>

Gertrude Stein's contribution to modernist poetry and poetics cannot be overstated\u2014and so now, in this third section of chapter 2, we turn to her, spending the better part of week 4 of our course on a selection of her supposedly \u201cdifficult\u201d writings. The difficulty of deriving any sort of conventional semantic meaning from the short prose-poems that comprise Stein's Tender Buttons turns out for many readers to be a helpful inducement to look for other 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 reject 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 a crucial 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 \u201cComposition as Explanation.\u201d<\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS:<\/b> 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\/28\/20 and 9 AM on 10\/4\/20; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 10\/5\/20 and 9 AM on 10\/11\/20. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, September 30, at 10 AM (Philadelphia time)<\/em><\/p>.","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 2.3 (week 4)\u2014the rise of poetic modernism: Stein"},{"contents":[{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 5"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Ruth Lechlitner's \"Lines for an Abortionist's Office\""},{"duration":"16","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Genevieve Taggard's \"Interior\""},{"duration":"25","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an optional further introduction to week 5 (audio & transcript)"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Ruth Lechlitner\u2019s \u201cLines for an Abortionist's Office\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Genevieve Taggard\u2019s \u201cInterior\u2019"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"essay #2: write reviews of others' essays"},{"duration":"21","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video discussion of Cullen\u2019s \u201cIncident\u201d"},{"duration":"19","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on McKay's \"If We Must Die\""},{"duration":"24","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Hughes's \"Dinner Guest: Me\""},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on teaching Hughes\u2019s \u201cDinner Guest: Me\u201d"},{"duration":"27","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Brooks\u2019s \u201cBoy Breaking Glass\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Countee Cullen\u2019s \u201cYet Do I Marvel\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Countee Cullen\u2019s \u201cIncident\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Claude McKay's \"If We Must Die\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to McKay perform \"If We Must Die\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a PoemTalk episode about \"If We Must Die\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Langston Hughes\u2019s \u201cDinner Guest: Me\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Gwendolyn Brooks\u2019s \u201cBoy Breaking Glass\u201d"},{"duration":"16","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch shorter version of video on Brooks's \"Boy Breaking Glass\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Gwendolyn Brooks\u2019s \u201ctruth\u201d"},{"duration":"32","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an audio discussion of Brooks's \u201ctruth\u201d"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a 30-minute PoemTalk discussion of Brooks\u2019s \u201ctruth\u201d & Etheridge Knight\u2019s poem-response"},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) listen to an abridged (17-min.) version of the PoemTalk discussion of Brooks & Knight"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Claude McCay's \"If We Must Die\""},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Frost's \"Mending Wall\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Robert Frost's \"Mending Wall\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Frost declaim \"Mending Wall\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/hear Frost's \"Mending Wall\" with machine-aided text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"optional: watch & listen to four contemporary poets debate \u201cMending Wall\u201d"},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch 6-minute excerpt from the 1-hr. video on \"Mending Wall\""},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Wilbur's \"The Death of a Toad\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion of Wilbur's \"The Death of a Toad\""},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Kennedy\u2019s \u201cNude Descending a Staircase\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion on Kennedy's \"Nude Descending a Staircase\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Richard Wilbur's \"The Death of a Toad\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read X. J. Kennedy\u2019s \u201cNude Descending a Staircase\u201d"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Richard Wilbur's \"The Death of a Toad\""}],"description":"

Week 5 of ModPo 2020 covers chapters 3, 4, 5 & 6 and runs from Sunday, October 4, starting at 9 AM, to Sunday, October 11 at 9 AM (Philadelphia time). <\/b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 5 materials are open and available all year. <\/p>

Chapter 3 is a glance at communist poetry of the 1930s. These were years of economic crisis\u2014the Depression. Like most other people, poets felt the urgency induced by privation, lack of opportunity, segregation and desperation. But poets had all along been inclined toward social as well as aesthetic experimentalism, and as they could write effectively, many felt they could be useful in the larger effort to find solutions\u2014some modestly reformist, some more extreme\u2014to the nation's and the world's huge problems. When the Depression set in, many poets embraced radical critiques of the economic status quo, and some even joined revolutionary groups such as the Communist Party of the United States. Such ideological journeys were often quite brief, however, and most once-Communist poets regretted joining the Party later, and said so. One of the myths created in the 1950s is that all modernist poets had repudiated modernism's embrace of opaqueness, indirection and self-referentiality and had decided suddenly to write clearly and \u201ctransparently\u201d so that masses of people could understand their language. This is not true\u2014many pre-1930s modernists continued to write in experimental modes and remained committed to cubism, surrealism, Dadaism, etc., as well as joining radical political causes. But for our purposes in this very brief chapter 3, we look at two poets whose poems might be said to contain radical content but to deliver that content in traditional\u2014one might even say conservative\u2014forms. What can we make of this apparent contradiction or irony? What can we learn here about modernism's relation to political life? <\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS:<\/b> During week 5 (covering chapters 3, 4, 5 & 6), there are two quizzes due (see below). There are no writing assignments due. Peer reviews of writing assignment #2 are due and should be submitted anytime between 9 AM on 10\/5\/20 and 9 AM on 10\/11\/20. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, October 7, 2020, at 3 PM (Philadelphia time) .<\/p>","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 3 (week 5)\u2014communist poets of the 1930s"},{"contents":[{"duration":"8","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 6"},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on the first section of Ginsberg's \"Howl\" (part 1)"},{"duration":"13","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on the first section of Ginsberg's \"Howl\" (part 2)"},{"duration":"19","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridged version of discussion of \"Howl\""},{"duration":"19","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Kerouac's ideas about prose"},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alternative) watch short version of video on Kerouac's ideas about prose"},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Kerouac's \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"9","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) abridged version of video on Kerouac's \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"11","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch ModPo TAs debate spontaneity & first thought\/best thought"},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video: can we do a close reading of babble flow?"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Bob Kaufman's \"Jail Poems\""},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch Doug Kearney & others on \"Jail Poems\""},{"duration":"8","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 6"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Creeley's \"I Know a Man\""},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Waldman's \"Rogue State\""},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Baraka's \"Incident\""},{"duration":"25","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Baraka's \"How You Sound??\""},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Jayne Cortez's \"She Got He Got\""},{"duration":"35","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an optional further introduction to chapter 7, week 6 (audio & transcript)"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Allen Ginsberg's \"Howl\" (part 1)"},{"duration":"13","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Ginsberg perform \"Howl\" in 1956"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a brief excerpt from Ginsberg\u2019s performance of \u201cHowl\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Jack Kerouac\u2019s \u201cEssentials of Spontaneous Prose\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Jack Kerouac\u2019s \u201cBelief & Technique for Modern Prose\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read section 1 of Kerouac's \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Kerouac perform the first section of \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read PoemTalk program notes on \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk episode on \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Clark Coolidge read section 4 of \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read section 4 of \"Old Angel Midnight\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Bob Kaufman's \u201cJail Poems\u201d (sections 3, 4, 7, 14, 19, 22, 34 & 35)"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alternative) watch shorter version of video on Kaufman's \"Jail Poems\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Robert Creeley's \"I Know a Man\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to 5 recordings of Creeley performing \u201cI Know a Man\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen with text-audio alignment to Creeley's \"I Know a Man\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk on Creeley's \"I Know a Man\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Anne Waldman perform \u201cRogue State\u201d"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video of Waldman\u2019s performance of \u201cRogue State\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Amiri Baraka\u2019s \u201cIncident\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Amiri Baraka's \u201cHow You Sound??\u201d"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch Doug Kearney on Baraka's \"How You Sound??\""},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch & listen as Jayne Cortez performs \u201cShe Got He Got\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read a transcript of \"She Got He Got\" by Jayne Cortez"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Ginsberg's \u201cHowl\u201d"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Robert Creeley's \"I Know a Man\""}],"description":"

Week 6 starts at 9 AM (Philadelphia time) on Sunday, October 11, 2020, and ends at 9 AM on Sunday, October 18, 2020.<\/b>For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 6 materials are open and available all year.<\/p>

The so-called \u201cNew American Poetry\u201d that emerged in the late 1940s and 1950s went in many directions; some trends, styles, and approaches overlapped, while some were (or seemed to be) more distinct and separable than others. The \u201cBeat\u201d poets were a fairly distinct community of writers, making it easier than it would be otherwise to study as a coherent movement their ecstatic, antic, apparently anti-poetic break with official verse culture. Our approach, in just one week, looks at two ubiquitously canonical Beats (Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac) and then quickly moves off to adjacent figures. Robert Creeley was not a Beat poet, but his most famous poem \"I Know a Man\" engages poetic, psychological, and social matters with which Ginsberg, Kerouac, and the others were obsessed. Bob Kaufman cherished the designation \"beatnik,\" and certainly takes up issues of ecstatic living and social alienation in a way aligned with Ginsberg but his \"Jail Poems\" bespeak his embrace of multiple, simultaneous associations: imagist, itinerant, Black, Jewish, Zen surrealist, incarcerant, \"abomunist.\" Anne Waldman is an \u201coutrider\u201d poet and is more closely associated with the second generation of \u201cNew York School\u201d poets (see chapter 8), but she was a dear friend of Ginsberg and learned much from his political pedagogy. Amiri Baraka, as Leroi Jones, was a Beat poet for a few years and then broke away. The poem by Baraka that we study here gives us a chance to look back on Countee Cullen's traditionally formal poetic response to racist hatred. The prose-poem\/manifesto by Baraka on how poets (should) sound extends a theme already important to this chapter: the primacy of sound (or music) as a form of freedom from linguistic convention. Jayne Cortez gives us a perfect example of this and permits us to suggest connections among the Beat aesthetic, Black Arts, the influences of jazz, and the emergence of \u201cspoken word\u201d performance. Our focus on Kerouac in chapter 7 is a little unusual \u2014 he, of course, is known more as a novelist than a poet. But his \u201cbabble flow\u201d and riffing in \"Old Angel Midnight\" have been a significant influence on contemporary poets, more than his narrative fictional stance as psycho-social itinerant. We will have occasion, then, to examine and question Kerouac\u2019s\u2014 and Ginsberg\u2019s\u2014claims to be writing naturally spontaneous language. Our chapter 9 poets for the most part doubt such a claim. <\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS:<\/b> During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There are no writing assignments due, nor peer reviews. There is a live webcast on Wednesday, October 14, at noon (Philadelphia time).<\/p> ","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 7 (week 6)\u2014breaking conformity: the beats"},{"contents":[{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 7"},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of O\u2019Hara's \u201cThe Day Lady Died\u201d"},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Koch's \u201cVariations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams\u201d"},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Ashbery's \u201cThe Instruction Manual\u201d"},{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion of Ashbery\u2019s \u201cThe Instruction Manual\u201d"},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Guest's \u201c20\u201d"},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion of Guest\u2019s \u201c20\u201d"},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on James Schuyler's \"February\""},{"duration":"16","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Ashbery's \"Some Trees\" (part 1)"},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Ashbery's \"Some Trees\" (part 2)"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Mayer\u2019s \u201cInvasion of the Body Snatchers\u201d"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 7"},{"duration":"13","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch a discussion of Eileen Myles' \"Mount St. Helens\""},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of Hanif Abdurraqib's \"USAvCUBA\""},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Patrick Rosal's \"Uptown Ode That Ends on an Ode to the Machete\" Part I"},{"duration":"26","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Patrick Rosal's \"Uptown Ode That Ends on an Ode to the Machete\" Part II"},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridged discussion of Rosal's poem (20 mins.)"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 7"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Frank O\u2019Hara\u2019s \u201cThe Day Lady Died\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to O'Hara perform \u201cThe Day Lady Died\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video of O'Hara reading \u201cThe Day Lady Died\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Kenneth Koch\u2019s \"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read John Ashbery\u2019s \u201cThe Instruction Manual\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Ashbery perform \u201cThe Instruction Manual\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Barbara Guest\u2019s \u201c20\u201d & listen to a recording"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read James Schuyler's \"February\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Schuyler perform \"February\""},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read John Ashbery\u2019s \u201cSome Trees\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Ashbery perform \u201cSome Trees\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to Ashbery\u2019s \u201cSome Trees\u201d with text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Bernadette Mayer\u2019s \u201cInvasion of the Body Snatchers\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Mayer perform \u201cInvasion of the Body Snatchers\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to Mayer\u2019s \u201cInvasion of the Body Snatchers\u201d with text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Eileen Myles' \"Mount St. Helens\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Myles read \"Mount St. Helens\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch Eileen Myles talk with Al Filreis about Mount St. Helens"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Hanif Abdurraqib's \"USAvCUBA\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Hanif Abdurraqib perform \"USAvCUBA\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Patrick Rosal\u2019s \u201cUptown Ode That Ends on an Ode to the Machete\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Patrick Rosal read \"Uptown Ode\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"essay assignment #3"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on O'Hara's \"The Day Lady Died\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Guest's \"20\""}],"description":"

Week 7 starts at 9 AM (Philadelphia time) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 and ends at 9 AM on Sunday, October 25, 2020.<\/b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 7 materials are open and available all year.<\/p>

Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, James Schuyler, and Kenneth Koch represent the first wave of New York School of poets in this week of our course. We met Anne Waldman already in chapter 7; she is deemed to be a \u201csecond generation\u201d New York School poet. Now we add another of that second generation, Bernadette Mayer\u2014and, in Eileen Myles, something of a third (or second-and-a-half) generation. Our super-close readings of Guest's \u201c20\u201d and Ashbery's \u201cSome Trees\u201d are intended, in part, to show that the non-narrative or anti-narrative styles of this group\u2014and their propensity for sudden shifts in pronoun use, inconsistent imagery, and inside-the-community name dropping\u2014nonetheless produce writing that can be interpreted line by line. During this week (a bare-minimum introduction to this playful postmodernity), we will get a bit of pastiche from Koch and one instance of O'Hara's \"I-do-this-I-do-that\" explorations of lunchtime, as well as examples of Ashbery's opaque lyricism, Guest's stunning memory-as-word associationalism, and Mayer\u2019s application of O\u2019Hara\u2019s exuberant attention to daily details to a woman\u2019s life and language. Hanif Abdurraqib and Patrick Rosal both respond directly to O'Hara's \"The Day Lady Died.\" Abdurraqib adapts O'Hara's anxious, breathless rush of intense memory to merge American competitiveness and the experience of anti-Blackness. Rosal's poem begins with an ensemble-voiced, present-tense, frenetic romp through New York City, very much influenced by O\u2019Hara\u2019s mode and sensibility. But then the poem moves elsewhere, enacting diasporic return, and pushes the New York School style beyond its earlier categories by developing its own powerful synthesis of global concerns. <\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS<\/b>: During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There is also a writing assignment due. Writing assignment #3 can be submitted anytime between 9 AM on 10\/19\/20 and 9 AM on 10\/25\/20; after that, peer reviews will be submitted anytime between 9 AM on 10\/26\/20 and 9 AM on 11\/1\/20. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, October 21, at 10 AM (Philadelphia time).","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 8 (week 7)\u2014the New York School"},{"contents":[{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 8 (12 mins.)"},{"duration":"24","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"optional 24-min. supplemental intro to Language poetry"},{"duration":"24","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Hejinian\u2019s My Life (part 1)"},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Hejinian\u2019s My Life (part 2)"},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridged version of discussion of Hejinian's \"My Life\""},{"duration":"21","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Perelman\u2019s \"Chronic Meanings\""},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Bernstein\u2019s \"In a Restless World Like This Is\""},{"duration":"6","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 8"},{"duration":"26","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Howe\u2019s \u201cMy Emily Dickinson\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch brief video introducing Mullen's \"Sleeping with the Dictionary\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Mullen\u2019s \u201cSleeping with the Dictionary\u201d"},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of John Keene's \"Persons and Places\" on location"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read 4 sections of Lyn Hejinian\u2019s \"My Life\""},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Lyn Hejinian read 4 sections of \"My Life\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Bob Perelman\u2019s \u201cChronic Meanings\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Perelman\u2019s note on \u201cChronic Meanings\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Perelman talk briefly about \u201cChronic Meanings\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Perelman perform \u201cChronic Meanings\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to Perelman\u2019s \u201cChronic Meanings\u201d as text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"13","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video of Bob Perelman & others discussing \u201cChronic Meanings\u201d"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Charles Bernstein\u2019s \u201cIn a Restless World Like This Is\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Bernstein perform \u201cIn a Restless World Like This Is\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to Bernstein\u2019s \u201cIn a Restless World Like This Is\u201d as text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk about Bernstein\u2019s \u201cIn a Restless World Like This Is\u201d"},{"duration":"18","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) listen to an abridged version of the discussion of \"In a Restless World...\""},{"duration":"8","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch Bob Perelman & others discussing Bernstein\u2019s \u201cRestless World\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Emily Dickinson\u2019s \u201cMy Life had stood\u2014a Loaded Gun\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read passages from Susan Howe\u2019s \u201cMy Emily Dickinson\u201d"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an excerpt of Charles Bernstein\u2019s conversation with Susan Howe about Emily Dickinson"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Rae Armantrout read and comment on \u201cMy Life had stood\u2014a Loaded Gun\u201d"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk on Susan Howe\u2019s \"My Emily Dickinson\""},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) listen to an abridged version of the PoemTalk discussion of \"My Emily Dickinson\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridged video on Howe's \"My Emily Dickinson\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read two poems from Harryette Mullen\u2019s book \u201cSleeping with the Dictionary\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Harryette Mullen read & explain \u201cSleeping with the Dictionary\u201d\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridged video on \"Sleeping with the Dictionary\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read \"Cant\" & \"Written by H'Self\" by Tyrone Williams"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Tyrone Williams read \"Cant\" & \"Written by H'Self\""},{"duration":"45","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to a PoemTalk discussion of Tyrone Williams's \"Cant\" & \"Written by H'Self\""},{"duration":"21","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) listen to an abridged (21-min.) version of the PoemTalk discussion of Tyrone Williams"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read John Keene's \"Persons and Places\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"essay #3: write reviews of others\u2019 essays"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Perelman's \"Chronic Meanings\""},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Henijian's \"My Life\""}],"description":"

AN OVERVIEW OF THE FINAL THREE WEEKS OF MODPO:<\/b> We spend our final three weeks surveying three related groupings of experimental poetry, covering recent decades to the present. In week 8 (chapter 9.1), we look at the so-called \u201cLanguage Poetry\u201d movement as it emerged in the San Francisco Bay area and New York in the 1970s and early 1980s. In week 9 (chapter 9.2), we turn to chance-generated and aleatory and quasi-nonintentional writing. In week 10 (chapter 9.3), we look at the emergence (or resurgence) of conceptual and unoriginal and recombinatory\u2014 supposedly \"uncreative\"\u2014poetry. Several of the 9.2 poets follow directly from the innovations of the 9.1 Language poets. A few of the 9.3 conceptualists see themselves as breaking away from Language poetry and embrace a \u201cpost-avant\u201d status, while others see a continuity from modernism through Language and aleatory writing to conceptualism. The extent to which all these poets\u2014but especially the 9.1 and 9.2 poets\u2014show their indebtedness to modernists such as Duchamp, Stein, Williams, and the proto-modernist Dickinson does suggest that our course is the study of a line or lineage of experimental American poetry continuing out of modernism. <\/p>

Week 8 begins at 9 AM on Sunday, October 25, 2020 and ends at 9 AM on Sunday, November 1, 2020. <\/b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 8 materials are open and available all year.<\/p>

By starting with Lyn Hejinian\u2019s \"My Life,\" we focus on ways in which\u2014and reasons why\u2014Language poets refused conventional sequential, cause-and-effect presentations of the writing self. They imply that the self is languaged \u2014 formed by and in language\u2014and that the self as written is multiple across time (moments and eras) and thus from paratactic sentence to paratactic sentence. While this radical revision of the concept of the lyric self (and of the super-popular genre of memoir) emphasizes one aspect of the Language Poetry movement at the expense of several other important ideas and practices, it is, we feel, an excellent way to introduce the group. Bob Perelman\u2019s \u201cChronic Meanings,\u201d aside from its contribution to this introduction, also picks up a theme of our course: the experimental writer attempts to encounter death (loss, grief, absence) by somehow making the form of the writing befit that discontinuity and disruption. We began this theme in chapter 2 with Stein's \u201cLet Us Describe\u201d and continued it in chapter 8 with O\u2019Hara\u2019s \u201cThe Day Lady Died,\u201d and we will proceed with Jackson Mac Low's \u201cA Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore\u201d in chapter 9.2. The Language poets' interest in rewriting and reinterpreting the rise of modernism leads us to Susan Howe's \"My Emily Dickinson,\" a helpful return to ModPo's first week. Chapter 9.1 continues with two poems from Harryette Mullen's book of intense alphabetical and lexicographical self-consciousness, Sleeping with the Dictionary.<\/em> Mullen's talent is diverse, and her work could have appeared in weeks 8 or 9 or 10, but it's here because we hope some readers will sense an interesting relationship between Sleeping with the Dictionary<\/em> and Hejinian\u2019s My Life.<\/em> Tyrone Williams's sense of the torqued languaged self directs that consciousness toward histories of Blackness in the U.S. The work of John Keene, who wrote a prose poem memoir influenced by Hejinian's \"My Life,\" is represented here with an experimental parallel-column text, \"Persons and Places,\" exploring the ongoing historical near misses caused by racist and homophobic assumptions. <\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS:<\/b> During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). No new writing assignment is due. Peer reviews of writing assignment #3 are due. Peer reviews should be submitted anytime between 9 AM on 10\/26\/20 and 9 AM on 11\/1\/20. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, October 28, at 6:30 PM (Philadelphia time).<\/>","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 9.1 (week 8)\u2014some trends in recent poetry: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E"},{"contents":[{"duration":"7","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 9"},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Cage's \"Writing through Howl\""},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Cage\u2019s adagia"},{"duration":"19","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Mac Low's \"A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore\""},{"duration":"26","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Mac Low's approach to Stein"},{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Osman's \"Dropping Leaflets\""},{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Bernadette Mayer's writing experiments"},{"duration":"14","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Retallack's \"Not a Cage\""},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch further discussion of Retallack's \"Not a Cage\""},{"duration":"16","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an optional further introduction to week 9: audio & transcript"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read a description of mesostics"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read a brief excerpt from John Cage\u2019s \u201cWriting through Howl\u201d"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read three pages on \u201cWriting through Howl\u201d by Marjorie Perloff"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"try your hand at making your own mesostic"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read a selection of John Cage\u2019s adagia"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Cage speak about why he seeks to \u201cmak[e] English less understandable\u201d"},{"duration":"7","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to an excerpt from Jackson Mac Low\u2019s \u201cA Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Daniel Kane\u2019s comment on Mac Low with reference to Peter Innisfree Moore"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"view Mac Low\u2019s chart for performers of \"A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read an article about Peter Innisfree Moore"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Mac Low\u2019s elaborate performance instructions for \u201cA Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore\u201d"},{"duration":"9","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of chance poetry & mourning"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Mac Low's 1978 reading of Stein's \"A Carafe, That Is a Blind Glass\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Mac Low's commentary on Tender Buttons"},{"duration":"2","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read a brief introduction to Mac Low\u2019s Stein poems"},{"duration":"7","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Mac Low's poem #100 in his Stein series, \u201cA Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair\u201d"},{"duration":"7","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Mac Low perform \"A Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair\""},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Jena Osman\u2019s \u201cDropping Leaflets\u201d"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Osman perform \u201cDropping Leaflets\u201d"},{"duration":"27","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk on Osman\u2019s \u201cDropping Leaflets\u201d"},{"duration":"17","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) listen to an abridged (17-min.) version of PoemTalk on \"Dropping Leaflets\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read a selection of Bernadette Mayer's writing experiments"},{"duration":"5","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Joan Retallack\u2019s \u201cNot a Cage\u201d"},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Retallack read \"Not a Cage\""},{"duration":"3","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read\/listen to Retallack\u2019s \u201cNot a Cage\u201d as text-audio alignment"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to PoemTalk on Retallack's \u201cNot a Cage\u201d"},{"duration":"1","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) listen to an abridged (18-min.) version of the PoemTalk discussion of Retallack's \"Not a Cage\""},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"essay assignment #4"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on John Cage"},{"duration":"30","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"on Joan Retallack's \"Not a Cage\""}],"description":"

Week 9 begins at 9 AM on Sunday, November 1, 2020 and ends at 9 AM on Sunday, November 8, 2020.<\/b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 9 materials are open and available all year.<\/p>

When Jackson Mac Low put a body of language (for instance a poem by Gertrude Stein) through a rigorous procedure, he would say that he created (or \u201cwrote\u201d\u2014in the sense of computer programming) the procedure and that the procedure then created the poem. One of his goals was to experiment with the elimination or evacuation or at least the suppression of poetic ego. In this sense his work stands alongside that of Hejinian, Bernstein, and Howe, who (by other means) sought to question the stable lyric subject that had been for so long been associated with the writing of poetry, and with imagination generally. On this point the chapter 9 poets are unified in breaking from modernism's implicit and often explicit claim of creative, a-world-in-a-poem-making genius. But otherwise the aesthetic connection between, for instance, Mac Low and Stein is strongly positive. (Please note: during our filmed discussion on Mac Low's \u201cA Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore,\u201d Al Filreis gets a little carried away when reading a list of words made from Moore\u2019s name; neither the word \u201cspicer\u201d nor the phrase \u201cthis weekend\u201d can be derived from those letters!) <\/p>

ASSIGNMENTS:<\/b> During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There is also a writing assignment due. Writing assignment #4 should be submitted between 9 AM on 11\/1\/20 and 9 AM on 11\/8\/20; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 11\/9\/20 and 9 AM on 11\/15\/20. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, November 4, at 3 PM (Philadelphia time).<\/p>","duration":"7","duration_unit":"HOURS","name":"chapter 9.2 (week 9)\u2014some trends in recent poetry: chance"},{"contents":[{"duration":"9","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch an introduction to week 10"},{"duration":"10","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on B\u00f6k\u2019s \u201cEunoia\u201d"},{"duration":"23","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Baum\u2019s \u201cCard Catalogue\u201d and \u201cDog Ear\u201d"},{"duration":"12","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Caroline Bergvall's \"VIA\""},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Magee\u2019s \u201cPledge\u201d & \u201cMy Angie Dickinson\u201d"},{"duration":"4","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch the CANON CHALLENGE for week 10"},{"duration":"16","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Waldrop\u2019s \u201cShorter American Memory\u201d"},{"duration":"50","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of Nasser Hussain's SKY WRI TEI NGS"},{"duration":"25","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridgement of Nasser Hussain discussion"},{"duration":"45","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch discussion of Jordan Abel's \"The Place of Scraps\""},{"duration":"20","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"(alt.) watch abridged version of Jordan Abel discussion"},{"duration":"25","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"watch video on Tracie Morris\u2019s \u201cAfrica(n)\u201d & final words"},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"read Christian B\u00f6k, \u201cChapter E\u201d of \u201cEunoia\u201d"},{"duration":"15","duration_unit":"MINUTES","name":"listen to Christian B\u00f6k perform \"Chapter E\u201d of \u201cEunoia\u201d"},{"duration":"10","d