Spring 2002 English W3409 section 001 FORM IN POETRY Charles Bernstein, David Gray Professor of Poetry and Letters & Director of the Poetics Program, State University of New York – Buffalo
Call Number	91748
Day & Time Location Office Hours Email	F 10:00am-12:30pm 507 Philosophy Hall 9am – 10am Fridays, 604 Philosophy Hall bernstei@bway.net

Required Books at Columbia Book Store:

From the Other Side of the Century: A New American Poetry 1960-1990, edited by Douglas Messerli

Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology, edited by Paul Hoover

Kenneth Koch, New Addresses

This "creative reading workshop" combines aspects of a literature class with some of the formats of an experimental creative writing class. The workshop is less concerned with analysis or explanation of individual poems than with finding ways to intensify the experience of poetry, of the poetic, through a consideration of how the different styles and structures and forms of contemporary poetry can affect the way we see and understand the world. No previous experience with poetry is necessary. More important is a willingness to consider the implausible, to try out alternative ways of thinking, to listen to the way language sounds before trying to figure out what it means, to lose yourself in a flurry of syllables and regain your bearings in dimensions otherwise imagined as out-of-reach.

The readings for this workshop are extensive and cannot all be discussed in class in any detail. The concept is for you to saturate yourself in postwar 20th-century North American innovative poetry. If you have specific questions, please bring these up in class or on the listserv.

Requirements

The basic requirement for the class is a weekly response to the assigned readings — usually a notebook or journal entry plus writing exercises involving the imitation of a poetic form being studied or relevant experiment. Please date each response (and number 2 to 14 according to syllabus).

The responses are open-ended and can be in whatever form you choose – they are meant to encourage interaction with the poems and also serve as a record of your reading. Each week, I have provided a set of questions on the reading to guide your responses, but these are suggestions and you should feel free to address other issues. In any case, try to be as detailed as you can and try to respond to the full range of the week’s reading.

Each week there is also a set of writing experiments/exercises, focused on imitating some of the forms of the assigned poets. Do at least two of these each week; where there are more than two listed, pick the ones you prefer.

A good way to fulfill the “response” requirement is to keep a journal noting reactions, comments, opinions of readings, lectures, and class discussion. The journal — or notebook— is an open form in which you can feel free to record your impressions in an informal manner. (The journal is not something different than the “response” papers assigned; rather, it is an alternative way of looking at the assignment. That is, instead of seeing the assignments as a set of 13 short papers and exercises, you can look at it as an ongoing diary of your reading, writing, listening.)

Use the journal (or, if you prefer, response papers) to document what you are reading – both assigned and unassigned reading. What do you think of the poem? Give as much detail as you can as to why you feel the way you do. What does the poem sound like, what does it remind you of? Quote specific lines or phrases that seem relevant. Being specific is the hardest part of this assignment and I almost always request descriptions of the form and style of the different poems: which can be as simple as a description of the visual shape of the poem, its length, the type of lines (long, short, metrical, enjambed), the sort of style or rhetoric or vocabulary (unusual, common, pastoral, urban, urbane, fast-paced, slow-moving, pictorial, bombastic, introspective, descriptive, narrative, fragmentary, etc.).

The point is not for you to analyze or explain the poem but rather to try to react to it. Cataloging the features of the poem won’t explain it but it may enable you to enter into the poem more fully.

What follows is an overall guide to each week’s responses:

•Of the poems read for this week, which is your favorite? Why? Which is the best. Why? Are favorite and best the same? Rank the poems in your order of preference.

•Of the poems read for this week, which did you like least? Why?

•Of the poems read for this week, which is the worst. Why? What are your criteria for deciding the quality of poem. Can poems that you don't like or understand still be good poems?

•Describe the performance style of the poetry readings/audio files: pace, theatrical style, timbre or tone of voice, rhythmic qualities of the reading, humorous/dry/emotional/impersonal, etc.

•Rank all the poems so far in order of preference: who did the best reading, whose poems did you think were the best? How did hearing the reading compare to reading the work on the page?

POEM PROFILER

Attached to the syllabus you will find a “Poem Profiler.” (This is also available to download at the web at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/temp/poemprofiler.rtf.)

The “Poem Profiler” asks a number of specific questions that should enable you to give detailed, rather than general, responses to a particular poem. Use the Profiler to help specify your responses. Initially, run the Profiler on a several poems; after that, use it selectively to further your reading and if and as you find it useful. After the first couple of tries, don’t use it if you don’t find it useful.

Here’s an alternate way of profiling:

Pick one poem. Describe (or catalog) its features. What kind of vocabulary does the poem use? What kind of diction or syntax is used? What is the mood of the poem? What is the most unusual feature of the poem? What does the poem sound like — give some examples of sound patterns in the poem. Detail any literary “devices” used

Compare poems in terms of continuity (hypotactic) / discontinuity (paratactic); fragmentated / unified; symmetrical/asymmetrical, smooth flowing / jerky or abrupt movement.

Detail the connection between the elements of a poem: expository (a discursive argument), narrative (temporal sequence of beginning, middle end), associative, surreal or dream-like, disjunctive, etc.

•Do you see anything that all the poems assigned for this week have in common?

•How does the set of poems for this week differ from the poems from last week?

•What issues of poetics — how a poem means or how it is made — are brought up by the readings. What were some of the issues raised along this line in last week's class discussion?

•[Try this one sometime after midsemester] Looking back on your previous responses, have you changed your opinions about any poems. How?

It is not necessary, or practical, for you to comment on every assigned poem. But if you choose to focus on one poet or poem, or to do the experiments, preface your response with a very quick take on the reading overall (likes/dislikes, general features, etc.).

Include the contexts in which you are reading or writing in your notebook. What's your mood, what's on your mind. How do the poems affect or interact with that, if at all.

Include, if you like, "diary" material about your life or general or poetic observations, interspersed with comments about the readings. Don't be afraid to go off on tangents, associated thoughts. Include shopping lists, dreams, travel notes, etc.

Each week you should send out part of your week’s writing to the listserv created just for this reading workshop or respond to other people’s posts. Information on the listserv will be provided at the first class.

Poetry on the Web

Check out the SUNY-Buffalo Poetics Program’s web site, the Electronic Poetry Center

http://epc.buffalo.edu

Audio resources also at http://www.factoryschool.org/content/poetry/index.html

Reading and listening assignments from the web are listed in the syllabus; LINEbreak and Live at the Ear are required; other audio resources are supplemental.

Recommended reading series

Double Happiness, Saturdays at 4:30pm: http://www.segue.org/calendar/index2002.htm

St. Marks’s Poetry Project: http://www.poetryproject.com/calendar.html

Syllabus

Unless otherwise noted, all page references are to the Messerli anthology, in order of appearance. Names* with asterisk have the main selection in Messerli and additional selection in Hoover (see index in Hoover for pages; be sure to read poems and poetics in Hoover for all authors with *). (A) indicates audio file at Factory School. Pages references are to Messerli unless otherwise indicated. LINEbreak and Live at the Ear refer to the audio resources available on the web at the Electronic Poetry Center (http://epc.buffalo.edu); the Real Player is needed to access these files.

1. Jan. 25 / introduction

2. Feb. 1

Objectivists/radical modernists after the war: Reznikoff, Niedecker, Rakosi, Zukofsky, Oppen (Messerli, pp. 39-122). AUDIO for all at Factory School (A).

·Rank the poets in order of preference. Of the poet you liked best and least: what is your favorite and least favorite poem? Why? Run the Poem Profiler on these two poems. What does this tell you about your preferences? What are you able to say about the poetics of the “objectivists”: what kind of poetic values do they articulate? Pick two poems by different authors and give a brief summary of their content. How is this summary different from the poem? Describe the "form" of a poem by two other authors. (By form, you can simply note the length of the line and number of lines, kind of words used, emotional tone of the words, the sound conveyed, or any structural or prosodic features of the poem). How does the form of each of these poems contribute to the content?

·Imitation: Write a poem in the manner of three of the five assigned poets. Do at least one “in the manner” of the poem chosen. For the others, write something with the identical number of words and structure as the original but substituting words of your own words those in the poem. Compare the original and imitations.

::Be sure to comment on your results. Post to the listserv.

3. Feb. 8

Black Mountain/Mythopoetics/Projective Verse/SF Renaissance (I): Olson*, Duncan* (A), Blaser (A), Spicer, (Messerli, pp. 113-184), Creeley* (A) (523-542). Note: In Hoover, read Levertov (A) and both poems and poetics by Olson, Duncan, Creeley, and Levertov.

LINEbreak: Creeley; Duncan reading “My Mother Would Be a Falcroness”.

· What is the relation of Olson’s “Projective Verse” essay to his poems? How about the relation of Creeleys’ poetics to his poems? For each poet, discuss what you find most distinctive (use poem profiler as necessary). List favorite/worst. What kind of allusions are used by these poets (compare to Objectivists)? What function do Creeley’s short lines serve. On diction: which poems come closest to spoken American English, which the least? Is this a value you like or don’t like in poetry? Like Oppen and Reznikoff, Blaser and Spicer worked in “serial” forms: what is the value or limitation of this approach?

· Write a Creeley “thin” poem, that is one with very short lines OR take a poem with longer lines from the anthology and rebreak the lines in the manner of Creeley. Next, write a poem using some of the techniques you have gleaned from “Projective Verse”: line as breath, parataxis. write a poems with the visual layout and “breath” breaks of Olson “field” poems, possibly using materials from anthologies, e.g. score “Projective Verse” as a projective poems

·Write a serial poem, made up of materials entirely taken from the readings so far.

::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

4. Feb. 15: CLASS CANCELLED: READ ahead for Feb. 22 and March 1 and March 8 and listen ahead to the assigned LINEbreak programs.

5. Feb. 22

Black Mountain/Mythopoetics/Projective Verse/SF Renaissance (II): Eigner*(A), Sorrentino, Wieners*, Kelly*, Johnson, Waldrop(A), Irby, Major (pp. 197- 274); Fanny Howe (p. 296ff), Bromige (p. 553ff), Davidson* (p. 677ff), Rothenberg*(A) (p. 870ff & poetics in Hoover), Taggart (p. 946ff). Hoover only: Dorn, Eshleman, Leverotov.

LINEbreak: Rothenberg. Live at the Ear: Waldrop

Note the mood or tone of several of the poems, citing specific passages. Eigner is a poet of the everyday/common: describe how he articulates this. He was also confined to wheelchair all his life due to cerebral palsy: is this something reflected in the poems? Make a list of the nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in one or more of the poems. Does this list tell you anything about the work? Read one of the poems out loud three or more times with different tempos and volume (best if this can be done with someone else): describe the results.

·Following Waldrops’s example in Reproduction of Profile: take a passage from one of the other poets so far read and change the gender of the speaker and cast in the context of a relationship between speaker and interlocutor.

·Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem and translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence.

::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

*

Note: Davidson and Taggart read at Double Happiness: Feb. 23.

On February 22 there are two relevant events in SoHo:

·7pm Michael Davidson and John Taggart, speaking on the work of George Oppen in a time of war in SoHo at the Dactyl Foundation 64 Grand Street, Ground Floor

·7pm Sandra Alcosser and Rachel Blau DuPlessis on Lorine Niedecker ($7): Poets House – 72 Spring Street

6. March 1

New York School: Guest, Schulyer*, O'Hara*(A), Ashbery* (Messerli: pp, 353-415) and Elmslie* (p. 862ff); Hoover only: Koch and O’Hara in the poetics section.

LINEbreak: Guest; Ashbery sound file .

· It is often said that these poets work on the “surface” in contrast with the “deep” poetics of some of the poets read last week. What is meant by this? Which of these poems comes closest to speech/vernacular? What kind of allusions are made? How does the comic work in these poems? Briefly, differentiate the five poets? Can serious poems be funny? Compare these poems to the previous poems in terms of the use of the everyday or commonplace? Does trivial subject matter make for trivial poems?

· Write a letter poem, as O’Hara’s “Day Lady Died” or one of Schuyler’s letter poems, possibly mentioning the names of friends, in the informal manner of O’Hara’s “Personism”.

·Write a Schulyer-like poem articulated the nonevents of the everyday (as “Chrystal Lithium in Hoover”).

·Erasure: Take a poem and crossout most of the words on each poem, retype what remains as your poem. (Cf.: Ashbery’s “Rain”.)

::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv.

7. March 8

New York School 2 / St. Marx: Ceravollo*, Berrigan(A)*; North*, Padgett*, Brownstein, Warsh*, Thomas*(A), Welish*, Godfrey*, Notley*, Ward* in both anthologies [Messerli, pp. 415-522] and in Hoover only: Towle, Lauterbach, M. Owen, Violi, Hoover, Myles, Chernoff, Equi, Gerstler. PLUS: Joe Brainaird I Remember.

· List favorite/worst. What’s the difference between this set of poets and the ones read for last week, using the same questions asked for week 6 or distinction of your own. Run the poem profiler on a few of these poems. Which of these poems most closely approximate American speech? Is this a good or bad thing? How does gender play out in these poems: does it matter “who” wrote the poem? What is the gender of a poem turned out to be different (e.g. if a Ward poem was written by a man, etc.)?

· Write a Berrigan-like sonnet, taking material exclusively from the antholgies.

· Brainard's Memory: Write a poem all of whose lines start "I remember ..."

· Write a poem in a “novel” form: index, table of contents, obituary, catalog, resume, course description, an advertisement for an imaginary or real product, an instruction manual, a travel guide, a quiz or examination, etc.

::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv..

8. March 15

Beats and Beyond: Ginsberg (Messerli, p. 185ff. & Hoover, p. 130 and 635); Kerouac (Hoover, p. 75) and sound clips; Corso (Hoover, p. 208); Ferlingheti (Hoover, p. 42), Baraka (Messerli, p. 917 & Hoover, pp. 258 and 645); McClure (Hoover, p. 243), Cortez (Hoover, p. 332), Wakowski (Hoover, p. 342); Waldman (Hoover, p. 451), Coleman (Hoover, p. 474)

Compare each poet in terms of familiar language/unfamiliar language: give examples. Pick your favorite poems of each author: describe the sound of each (use the Profiler, without necessarily filling it out). What is the relation of the sound to the poem’s theme or point-of-view? Write in some detail about two or three poems. Detail any literary “devices” used (see Profiler). Are any of these poets more or less political than the others. Explain.

·Write an imitation of “Howl”.

·Take one, two or three different poems and cut each somewhere in the middle, then recombine with the beginning parts following the ending parts.

·Substitution (1) : "Mad libs." Take a poem and put blanks in place of three or four words in each line, noting the part of speech under each blank. Fill in the blanks being sure not to recall the original context.

::Be sure to comment on your results and post to the listserv..

9. March 29:

From Chance to Performance: Cage* (p. 827 in Messerli and pp. 17 and 621 in Hoover); Mac Low*(A) (p. 844); Antin* (p. 890); Retallack (p. 933); Benson, Child, Darragh, Templeton, Harryman* (pp. 1071-1111)

Canadian pataphysics: nichol (p. 308), Dewdney (p. 341), McCaffery (A) (p. 1008).

Live at the Ear: McCaffery

LINEbreak: Mac Low, McCaffery, Harryman, Templeton

What happen to originality when poems are composed of “found” material, as in Mac Low and Cage. What happens to intentinality is poems are composed by systematic procedures? Is this a good thing? Are Antin’s works poems? What is the role of performance in these works?

·Acrostic chance: Use one of the anthologies as your source text. Use title of book or poem as acrostic key phrase. For each letter of key phrase go to page number in book that corresponds (a=1, z=26) and copy as first line of poem from the first word that begins with that letter to end of line or sentence. Continue through all key letters, leaving stanza breaks to mark each new key word. (Cf.: Jackson Mac Low's Stanzas for Iris Lezak.) Variations include using author's name as code for reading through her or his work, using your own or friend's name, picking different kinds of books for this process, devising alternative acrostic procedures.

·Talk poem: record yourself talking a poem and transcribe.

· Autopilot: Trying as hard as you can not to think or consider what you are writing, write as much as you can as fast you can without any editing or concern for syntax, grammar, narrative, or logic.

10. April 5

Kenneth Koch visit: New Addresses

·Using the poem profiler or previous questions, present your responses to this work.

·Write one to three poems using the form of Koch’s New Addresses.

·Looking back on your previous responses, have you changed your opinions about any poems. How? What has been the most useful aspect of the class? What you have you found least useful? What do you like best about the class discussions, what least?

11. April 12

Lyric/Self/Voice/Ideolect/Sentence: Materializing the Word (I): Susan Howe* (p. 275), Ward* (p. 511), Weiner*(A), Coolidge*, Hejinian*, Grenier*, Greenwald, Piombino (Messerli, pp. 523-643), Davies (p. 803), & Hejinian poetics in Hoover (p. 653).

Live at the Ear: S. Howe, Davies, Weiner and Greenwald

LINEbreak: S. Howe, Hejinian

What role does voice play in the poems of Weiner, Grenier, and Greenwald? Try to characterize the difference between each of these poets? Select several poems and discuss the form and mood of these poems and the relation among them. Is Hejinian “happy”, is Howe “anxious”? Coolidge suggests that Kerouac is his most important influence? Why is that? Discuss Susan’s Howe’s use of history in one of her poems. Give a detailed response to listening to the poets read their work: how is that different than what is on the page?

·Write a poem (see for example Coolidge in Hoover) consisting entirely of one or two word lines in “field” layout, all words taken from the anthologies.

· “My Life”: Write down a set of autobiographical sentences. Arrange them in nonsequential orders.

· Burroughs's fold‑in: Take two different pages from a newspaper or magazine article, or a book, and cut the pages in half vertically. Paste the mismatched pages together. (Cf.: William Burroughs’s The Third Mind.) Use the computer cut-up engine to perform a similar task automatically.

12. April 19

Lyric/Self/Voice/Ideolect/Sentence (II): DiPalma*, Palmer*, Mayer*, Sherry, Silliman*(A), Armantorut*, Perelman*, Watten*, Robinson (pp. 644-748), Brossard (p. 959); note Mayer(A) and Silliman poetics in Hoover.

Live at the Ear:: Hunt (not in anthologies), Silliman, Watten

LINEbreak: Silliman

Describe different ways disjunction is used by these poets. Is it possible to paraphrase any of these poems: which ones is this possible for and which not? Why? Paraphrase one poem and compare the paraphrase to the original: what is the difference? Discuss the poetics articulated by Hejinian, Silliman, and Mayer in the Hoover poetics and their views, along with Howe and McCaffery, in the LINEbreak programs. What do you see as the relation of the poetics to the poems? Which “poetics” did you like the best? Find most interesting? Found most provocative?

·Procedural form (writing a poem according to some prescribed numeric pattern): try for example a Fibonacci (cf. Silliman’s Tjanting): 1,1,2,3,5 to construct the units of a poem: words, phrases, lines, sentences. Invent new material or use anthologies for source texts.

·Doubling: Starting with one sentence, write a series of paragraphs each doubling the number of sentences in the previous paragraph and including all the words used previously. (Abbreviated version: do this with one word or one phrase).

·Serial sentences: Select one sentence each from a variety of different books or other sources or from the anthologies. Add sentences of your own composition. Combine into one paragraph, reordering to produce the most interesting results.

·Dream work: Write down your dreams as the first thing you do every morning for 30 days. Apply translation and aleatoric processes to this material. Double the length of each dream. Weave them together into one poem, adding or changing or reordering material. Negate or reverse all statements (“I went down the hill” to “I went up the hill,” “I didn't” to “I did”). Borrow a friend's dreams and apply these techniques to them.

13. April 26

Lyric/Self/Voice/Ideolect/Sentence (IV): Imploding syntax/social contexts: Day (p. 814), Messerli (p. 983) Inman (p. 997), Mackey*(A) (p. 1028), Scalapino(A)* (p. 1048), Andrews* (p. 1056); Hoover only: Fraser, Berssenbrugge

LINEbreak and Live at the Ear: Scalapino, Andrews

·Using previous questions, give your specific reaction to these poets. Give a detailed response to listening to the poets read their work: how is that different than what is on the page? Discuss your reaction to the Andrews and Mackey poetics in Hoover and the Scalapino and Andrews LINEbreak interviews.

·For the class overall: which were your favorite poets? Are your favorite poems the same as the one you consider to be the “best” poets? If not, why? Any general responses to the class welcome (supplemental comments made for the April 5 class).

·The Andrews System: Use a small cut-up blank pages or pad or memo book; over the week, write down from a couple of words to at most a couple of phrases on each page. Shuffle the pages to lose any temporaral sequence. From the results, compose a poem.

·Write a poem made up entirely of neologisms or nonsense words or fragments of words. (Cf.: Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky", Khlebnikov's zaum, Schwitters "Ur Sonata" (at UBU "historical"). P. Inman's Platin, David Melnick's Pcoet.) Use Neil Hennessy's JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine to generate lexicon.

14. May 3 (Last Class): WE WILL MEET IN DIFFERENT CLASSROOM, TBA

Digital Poetry (some may require cable connections and flash, shockwave, etc):

Briam Kim Stefans, The Dreamlife of Poetry; see also Stefans’s digital picks.
Charles Bernstein, "An Mosaic for Convergence"
John Cayley, "Indra's Net"
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, "Machine Visions: Towards a Poetics of Artificial Intelligence" & his home page
Jim Rosenberg's “Diagram Series” see also home page

Jim Andrews’s “Nio”

Jennifer Ley, see for example “Amniotic Meaner”

Loss Pequeño Glazier’s digital works

Tammy McGovern’s “Order 2001” (wait to load, click on screen, requires SHOCK)

Kenneth Goldsmith, “Fidget”

PLUS surf two sites: the Digital Poetry pages at the EPC and UBU web.

·Post at least one work of digital poetry that you want to recommend to the class.

·Create a digital poem or plan for one on paper.

·Discuss visual poetry and its possibilities.