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Start Here--Bishop, Williams

  Hi All-- PLEASE NOTE:  Post comments related to the poetry itself here. For practical concerns about the course, use the discussion board on Blackboard, or email me with questions. You've reached the class blog for English 42. Always check here for announcements and updates. Always read my posts before writing essays. You may also add your own voice, by either posting a blog of your own, or choosing a blog from one of your fellow bloggers (list to left; more names will appear as blog URLs are submitted) and adding your two cents (or two bucks--adjusted for inflation--) * * * * Bishop and Williams: Be sure to review the  study sheet  for Bishop and Williams, posted to BS, for insights into the themes/concerns of poems for both poets. The quotes on the study sheets are excerpted from articles on MAP and LRC (see course syllabus); search for the complete articles in these databases. Look over the  exercises  on BS, as well, which can provide additional guida...
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Frost, Komunyakaa, Ansel, Olds, Lee, Gallagher

  Here's something to consider. In many of the poets we study, it seems that relatively ordinary events produce complex, ambiguous mental and emotional responses, leading to profound insights (these can be critical insights into conflicts in our society or culture, questions about the relation of art to life and the purpose and value of art, etc.). How do you see this in Frost's "Birches" and/or "After Apple Picking" and Komunyakaa's "Facing It"? Plenty of useful stuff on the study sheets/exercises  + a critical article accompanying Ansel's poem "Glaze" (noted on syllabus),  which can be cited in your essays, but is also a good model of close reading/detailed analysis.   For Ansel, also check the Lit Resource Ctr: there is a brief review under "critical articles" that should prove useful; c heck those.     Also in BB, under the "primary sources" tab, you may also read more of her poetry--and I will say, she is ...
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Harjo, Sanders, Sanchez, Baca

  Since any of the poets we have been reading the last two weeks (including Baraka and Cortez, as well as this week's writers) often perform their poems, and since the urge toward oral performance often partly shapes the poems' forms (use of a public address rhetorical mode in Cortez's "There It Is," from last week selections, for eg)--or, we might say, an urge toward performance is embedded in the poems' forms and structures--since, that is, the poems exist both on the page and off the page in live performances--it could be insightful, as part of your analyses, to consider some of the performance versions of these poems. Check YouTube for videos...also PennSound for sound recordings... Harjo : "she Had Some Horses" Certainly, the horses can be seen to represent her personal life, but also the cultural history of a people (Native American), and human nature generally, so you 'd want to notice how the horses symbolize human desire, fear, spiritual...
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Wakoski

  "The Red Bandana" Consider the ambiguity of the red bandanna as a symbol; it helps characterize the speaker's sense of herself, as distinguished from the male addressee (the red takes on different meanings in these contexts) and also helps characterize their relationship (the nexus/pattern--red bandanna, bull fight, blood sport,etc, you are noticing --what other images fall into this pattern and how, specifically, do they characterize the addressee and the relationship between him and the speaker? The imagery of stanza 5 takes us beyond that relationship). Note the image contrasts, and difference in tone/attitude, in the speaker's descriptions of herself and the addressee, and how that tempers the final stanza "The Hitchhikers" Stanzas 2 and 3 provide the personal/emotional foregrounding for the what the hitchhikers--it's really their heads that is the focus--and the berries "mean"; what role they play in the speaker's psychology. The ima...
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Hughes, Brooks, Baraka, Cortez, Waldman, Giorno

  H ughes ' "Harlem": For some help unpacking this condensed piece, see the study sheets/exercises (the comments on "Harlem" and "Theme for English B." Understanding how socio-cultural conditions for African Americans in America post WW II relate to the "dream" of the Harlem Renaissance will help explain the ambiguous, disillusioned tone of this poem; it's mixture of militancy and hope. What was that dream, and how did it change? How do you see this tension and ambiguity in the poem's images? it's structure and line breaks? Look closely at contrasting/conflicting details... The introductory essay on Hughes on PF can also be helpful in dealing with the question of dialect in his earlier poems: Is he stereotyping, or challenging the academic, Anglified verse of other African American poets in the 20s and 30s (when many of these dialect poems were written)--see Countee Cullen's poetry as an eg)--and representing a more "aut...
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Piercy, Plath, Snyder Ferlinghetti

  For Piercy, you may want to check Meredith Jones article, "Makeover Culture's Dark Side,"  posted to my Eng 12 course on Blackboard this semester (Sp 2021, section  56, CUNYFirst code 17888, respectively--guest access should be allowed, but let me know if problems): go to "course documents," scroll down to "Articles: Media, Cosmetic Surgery (Meredith Jones)," and select the PDF file titled "cossurgmakeover"; read esp the section headed "What A Lovely Corpse," beginning p 96, and esp the highlighted sections on pp 98 and 100--a very interesting discussion of the Snow White fairy tale as it relates to gender issues and cosmetic surgery.  This is support material, but does not replace a secondary source on Piercy's work. Both Plath's and Piercy's poems explore/explode various stereotypes associated with femininity: Piercy esp body image and gender; Plath conventional notions of motherhood and pregnancy. Posted by  tl at  ...
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Ginsberg, Kaufman, Levertov, O'Hara, Blackburn, Armantrout, Oliver

For r AG and Kaufman, check the exercises/study sheets on Bb, which give some pointers and point to some secondary sources (full articles in the Lit. Resource Center and excerpts in MAP, as usual; Poets.org also has some articles on AG). Formally speaking, one interesting thing to observe about Ginsberg (esp. Howl), is how he uses image juxtapositions and ellipsis to bring worlds/world views/socio-cultural realities normally separated or cordoned off into dynamic confrontation ("hydrogen jukebox," for eg., "Mohammedan angels / staggering on tenement roofs," "supernatural darkness of cold-water flats," "teahead joyride / neon blinking traffic light," "submarine light of Bickford’s," etc.; "hydrogen jukebox," for example, as an image condenses--and brings into direct confrontation-- references to the military-industrial complex and 1950's escapist, pop youth culture ); Ginsberg also uses ellipsis and image juxtapositions to ...
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