Texts and Materials

Gwynn, Poetry: a Pocket Anthology, 3rd edition.
Best American Poetry 2000, eds. Rita Dove and David Lehman.
Materials on reserve and class handouts.
3-ring binder for abovementioned materials
At least 18 years life experience
A heart, soul, brain or other resonating device

Course Description

We'll read a wide variety of poetry in this course, ranging from Greek and Roman lyrics to the English Romantics to contemporary slam/spoken word poetry. We'll also focus more intensively on several poets, reading and discussing a number of poems by them. These poets include William Shakespeare, John Donne, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, W.B. Yeats, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, and James Wright, as well as one or two contemporary local poets.

One primary goal for the class is to introduce you to the range of expressive possibilities that the different styles and forms of poetry make available. I will freely confess that my own interests have to do with expression, emotion, and the cultural role of poetry, and that these interests are reflected in my approach to the class. However, I am open to a variety of approaches to poetry and the class will hopefully reflect your own interests and concerns. Above all, I want to present poetry in a way that will make you want to crack open a book of poetry on your own sometime in the future.

In my experience, students often don't feel capable of reading poetry; they feel like they're somehow not smart enough to do so. I'm convinced you are smart enough (and, gosh darn it, people like you!). My aim with this class is to help you develop your already-existent reading skills and apply them to poetry, to get at the emotional resonances of poetry and how the emotional content makes a poem meaningful (or not).

I expect everyone in the class to be honest. This means honesty with each other, with me, and with yourself. This doesn't mean, of course, that you can't be a smartass every now and then. But I do expect you to be truthful about the reactions you have to poems and to the class discussion of them.

The reading in this class may seem light (6-7 poems a class session): don't be fooled. I expect that you'll spend as much time on this class as you would on any other. Spend time with the poems: read them more than once. Give some thought to them, to your out-of-class writing, and to your discussion forum participation. If you do, you'll get a lot more out of the individual poems themselves, and the class as a whole.

Grading

Discussion Forum 15%
Informal Writing & Participation 15%
Poetry Reading Report 10%
Broadside Project 10%
Explication 10%
Personal Response Paper 10%
Book Review 15%
Final Exam 15%

Notes on paper formats:

Generally, I expect any out-of-class writing you do to be typed. I would like both hardcopy and an electronic version of each paper. (This is what old folks call "word processed." We also call CD's "albums." I'm rapidly approaching the age where I walked to school, every day, in the snow, uphill both ways.) The basic format is: typed, double-spaced, 1" margins, and a normal size font (the default for me is 12 point Times New Roman, in which font this very document is written). Also, please number your pages (preferably in the upper right hand corner). You can submit the electronic version to me via email or on a disk (which I'll return at the next class period, or after my office hours the same day, if you're desperate). Please ensure that any files or attachments are virus-free. (Otherwise, my response will be swift and terrible, and will involve both a baseball bat and your keyboard.) It's often safest to save your file in rich text format (rtf), which keeps basic text formatting (italics, etc.), but disables any Word macro viruses.

Attendance Policy:

One of my assumptions is that we're all adults here–I trust each of you to be present in class every day. It is my fervent hope that you will not be too hungover, distracted, dazed, or otherwise chemically affected during each class meeting, but perhaps that hope is a vain one. (Although you should be aware that if you show up under the effects of laudanum, I will ask you to recite "Kubla Khan"...) In any event, I generally appreciate attendance and active participation. Your behavior in this regard will affect your final grade in two ways–one, in your "discussion form/class discussion" grade, and two, in your informal writing grade. Informal writings done in class, generally, can't be made up, but I'll drop the lowest five informal writing grades. Thus, you have the option of cutting five classes with no ill effects. However, if you choose this path (let's call it, say, the Dark Side), you're gambling that all your other informal writing grades will be high enough, or that you won't have a serious illness later in the semester. It is, as they say, your call.

Writing Center

This is a valuable resource to you at any stage of your writing process, from brainstorming to revising–I should know: I work there! Call 962-7710 to make an onsite appointment, or visit the online Writing Center at: http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/.