12:20p-1:10p MWF (30) 3 cr 


Twentieth-century poetry by self-described Americans has been closely
identified with what Ezra Pound famously termed the challenge to "Make
It New."  Yet the question of just what "making it new" might mean was
itself so hotly contested throughout the century that the course of
poetry in that ersatz period can appear a bewilderingly complex and
incoherent phenomenon–as does some of the poetry itself to many
readers.  Why did poets feel the need to make it new?  What did making
it new mean to people entering the institution of "poetry" from
different social positions?  We will look at a number of different
forms of poetry developed by poets from the United States, not
forgetting to note the extent to which "Americanism" was or was not of
concern to them in their formal and thematic experimentation.  I will
make room for a few writers who were considered central to
contemporary poetry in their time but have dropped from favor since;
this will allow us to ask why.  Most of the semester will be devoted
to the different forms of poetic "modernism," but at least the last
four weeks will be devoted to work of poets often called
"post-modern."  We will consider why a break from "modernism" was
thought necessary and the extent to which such a break was actually
accomplished, or at least begun. 


The semester will be divided into units composed of provisionally
different "types" of poets.  At the beginning we will look very
briefly at the work of three poets (Whitman, Dickinson, Poe) often
cited as modernists before "modernism" who remain important to
post-modernists.  Chief poets to be considered will include Ezra
Pound, William Carlos Williams, H.D., Robert Frost, Marianne Moore,
Wallace Stevens, Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, Charles Olson, Amiri
Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde,
Jorie Graham, and Joy Harjo.


Written assignments will include two papers and two exams.