US Poetry Since Whitman - AAA133023
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US_Poetry_Since_Whitman.pdf | Stephan Delbos, M.F.A., Ph.D. | |
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Summer Semester 2025 Course Outline
Course Lecturer: Stephan Delbos, MFA, PhD This course surveys American poetry from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century, emphasizing stylistic continuities and disruptions, transnational influences, and the impact of technology, sociology and politics on the choices poets make with words. Beginning with Walt Whitman, the course examines many of the most significant movements and moments in American poetry and illuminates its continuous evolution between 1850 and 2025. Upon completion of the course, students will have a more comprehensive understanding of American poetry and, hopefully, a deeper appreciation of it. Requirements Attendance and class participation Weekly short responses to readings Class presentation Final essay Optional 2nd essay for a ZK Attendance: You are required to attend all class meetings on time. Class presentation: Each student is required to deliver a five-minute presentation on a specific topic, poem, or poet. Final essay: Students will write a final essay of 2,000 words on one of the poets or topics we’ve covered in class. The subject will be discussed with the teacher in advance. Primary and secondary sources are required. The essay must be typed in Times New Roman 12-point font and double-spaced. Title the essay, number the pages, and staple them together in the top left corner. Late papers will not be accepted without a legitimate excuse. In addition, students wanting to produce a second graded essay for a ZK may do so: required length: 2,000-3,000 words; subjects to be discussed with the teacher. All essays must follow departmental essay guidelines. School Policies Course lecturers will fail any piece of work that they feel shows clear signs of having been plagiarized. Contact details stephan.delbos@ff.cuni.cz Course Schedule Week 1: Songs of Myselves: 19th Century Roots and Routes Selected Readings: Walt Whitman; Mercy Warren; Paul Laurence Dunbar; Ralph Waldo Emerson; Emily Dickinson; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Discussion: Syllabus review; class expectations; lecture on the roots and routes of modern American poetry; free verse and received forms Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 2: Against My Ruin: Mid-period Modernism Selected Readings: Ezra Pound; T. S. Eliot; Robert Frost; Hilda Doolittle; Amy Lowell Discussion: What is/was Modernism? Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 3: If We Must Die: Black Modernism in Harlem Selected Readings: Claude McKay; Langston Hughes; Gwendolyn Bennett Discussion: The African American experience as substance for Modernist poetry Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 4: To Brooklyn Bridge: Modernism Strikes Back Selected Readings: Marianne Moore; Kenneth Patchen; Kenneth Rexroth; Hart Crane; Kenneth Fear-ing Discussion: The outliers of modernism Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 5: The New American Poetry and Cold War Nationalism Selected Readings: Frank O’Hara; Charles Olson; Robert Duncan; William Carlos Williams; Elizabeth Bishop; Sylvia Plath; Barbara Guest; Helen Adam; Madeline Gleason Discussion: What was the New American Poetry? Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 6: Reassessing the Cold War Canon Selected Readings: Margaret Atwood; Robert Lowell; Gregory Corso; Thomas McGrath; Dudley Fitts; Amiri Baraka; Robert Creeley; Donald Hall Discussion: How were poets affected by the Cold War? Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 7: Beats, Squares and Rod McKuen Selected Readings: Allen Ginsberg; Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Ted Jones; Jack Spicer; Stephen Jonas; John Wieners; Rod McKuen Discussion: Post-war rebellion in American poetry Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 8: A Girl is a Girl is a Girl: “Feminist” Poetics Selected Readings: Eileen Miles; Denise Levertov; Adrienne Rich; Susan Howe; Audre Lorde; Rita Dove; Rachel Blau DuPlessis Discussion: Poets of second-wave and third-wave feminism Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 9: “I HATE SPEECH”: Language Poetry and the Post-Avant Selected Readings: Lyn Hejinian; Ron Silliman; Charles Bernstein; Carla Harryman; David Bromige Discussion: What is Language Poetry? Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 10: Thinkers or Readers: Conceptual Poetry and Uncreative Writing Reading: Kenneth Goldsmith; Vanessa Place Discussion: Uncreativity and textual appropriation Homework: Read and prepare for discussion/presentation Week 11: New Formalisms; Gnosticisms Selected Readings: James Merrill; Nathaniel Mackey; Fred Moten; Peter Gizzi Discussion: Spirits and forms at the turn of the twenty-first century Homework: Write final essay proposal Week 12: “you are in desperate need of yourself”: Social Media and Identity Poetics Selected Readings: Rupi Kaur; Maggie Smith; Patricia Lockwood; Atticus; Ilya Kaminsky; Danez Smith Discussion: Digital songs of digital selves: Poetry in the 2020s Homework: Finish final essay, which is due two weeks after the final class Last update: Delbos Stephan, M.F.A., Ph.D. (02.02.2025)
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