Fall 2006 Advance Course Information

This information effective for Fall 2006. Check with instructor the first day of class for any changes.

Literature/Creative Writing

[LTCR-183]

183. Advanced Writing: Poetry

Instructor: Rob Wilson
Office: Oakes College, Room 311
Office Hours: Mondays, 1-4, and by arrangement.
E-mail: rwilson@ucsc.edu
Phone: 831-459-2401

The following syllabus is from Fall 2003

Course Description

UCSC Catalogue Description:  “Intensive work in writing poetry.  Satisfies the Creative Writing Literature concentration.  Enrollment restricted to creative writing literature majors or permission of instructor.  May be repeated for credit.”

Seminar Format

This poetry-writing course follows a workshop format: after pondering examples and tactics relevant to a given assignment in the “Poetry Workshop Course Reader,” you are asked to write a new poem (approximately every other week) which you will photocopy (providing enough copies for others in the class, including  the instructor, approximately 20 copies maximum) and which becomes the basis for class performance, critique, and discussion. 

While we study and range around in various voices and forms from postmodern sonnets to imagistic poetics, you are asked to write in five different creative genres in relation to what we read. 

After an initial discussion of imagistic, dialogical, formal and language strategies, I want to focus especially on the whole idea of using “persona” tactics, that is, activating voices of otherness and projections of characters and situations beyond the ego-self in the poem. In this regard, we also experiment with the idea of “translating” other people’s poems and absorbing “outside” languages into your own voice and language (as in Jack Spicer’s After Lorca).  The goal is also to have you push towards thinking about and writing in “longer,” more experimental, and multi-voiced poetic structures.

Required Text

Our “Poetry Workshop Reader” contains a diverse assortment of photocopied materials relating to each of the poetry assignments.  This Course Reader is required for the course and is available for sale only at Slug Coop Bookstore, 224 Cardiff Place, Santa Cruz, just below campus, phone:  831-469-7584.

This “Poetry Workshop Reader” contains selected materials from such works as:

• Bertolt Brecht, Poems, 1913-1956   
• Frederico Garcia Lorca, Poeta En Nueva York
• Jack Spicer, After Lorca   
• Ezra Pound, Personae:  Cathay                 
• Ron Silliman, The ChineseNotebook
• Henri Michaux, Darkness Moves 
• Eric Chock, Last Days Here
• Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III      
• Bernadette Mayer, Sonnets
• Juliet S. Kono, Tsunami Years
• John Yau, Radiant Silhouette          
• C.K. Williams, Flesh and Blood
• Robert Bly, ed., Leaping Poetry      
• Susan Schultz, ed., Tinfish
• Walter Lew, ed., Kaya Anthology
• William Carlos Williams, Selected Poems
• John Ashbery, Houseboat Days
• Michael Ondaatje, Secular Love      
• Rob Wilson, Waking In Seoul
• Faye Kicknosway, All These Voices  
• Juliana Spahr, For More
• James Schuyler, Hymn to Life

Recommended Texts

(Some copies are available for purchase at The Literary Guillotine, 204 Locust Street, in downtown Santa Cruz, phone:  831-457-1195.)

• Lois Ann Yamanaka, Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater (Bamboo Ride Press).
• Jack Spicer, The Collected Books of Jack Spicer (Black Sparrow Press).
• Robert Creeley, ed., The Best American Poetry, 2002 (Scribner/Simon & Schuster).

Required Writing Assignments 

You must keep up with the writing (and related reading) assignments.  Your grade for the course is based upon a “mini-collection” you compose (due at the last class meeting) using the new poems you have written/revised for the course (at least five poems), as combined with any other of your poems and poetic writings into a fresh and coherent imaginative structure.

The poems you write for the class can be new or based on freshly revised versions of poems you have written before, but you must bring a clearly typed version to class photocopied for class discussion. 

The poetic miscellany/journal is a longer, more open-ended form that we discuss and study in class during and after working on assignment 5.  This project is not handed in until the last week of class although you should be working on it earlier. (Most weeks you are given a writing assignment that is due in about 7-14 days:  each of your poems should be typed, proofread, and ready to be photocopied for in-class reading and group discussion.) 

Course Goals

Beyond understanding how contemporary poetry works as a distinct language of self-development and social transformation, the goal of the class is for each student to produce five poems as well as to put together a longer "poetic miscellany/journal" based on collective assignments and on these individual poems you write during the semester. 

The perspective of the course is that of writing poetry and poetics from the contemporary postmodern American angle of vision.  The focus of this course is on the student's own production of poems, through a heightened perception and experience of what "poetry" is in its contemporary manifestations. The “Poetry Workshop Course Reader" gives you some working sense of models, voices, languages, and forms.

Unlike most Literature classes, the focus of this class is on your own "production" rather than "consumption" of poetry, though these are deeply related activities.  Can you sing the blues without having studied and interiorized hundreds of blues lyrics and riffs?  This course also familiarizes you with American poetic "culture," both local and national, by making you better acquainted with poetry readings, little magazines, book reviews, ongoing social struggles by writers for fame, identity, location, perseverance, career survival, etc.

Grade

You must keep up with the writing (and related reading) assignments throughout the course. In addition to this focused participation in the seminar workshop, your grade/ narrative evaluation for the course ultimately is based upon the “mini-collection” you compose (which is due at the last class meeting) using the poems you have written/revised for the course (at least five new poems) as combined with other of your poems and poetic writings into a coherent imaginative structure.

Syllabus of Readings/Writing Assignments
(subject to some nuts-and-bolts adjusting as the semester unfolds)
[**signifies a week when a poetry assignment from you is due in class]:

Week 1: 
Getting Started:  “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”

Monday, September 29: introduction to procedures and requirements for the course.

Wednesday, October 1:  read all the materials in “Poetry Workshop Reader,” Section One, on “Relationship” genre poems and examples.

Week 2: 
Dialogues and Solitudes of Relationship:  I and Thou Lyricism.

Monday:  October 6:  read and discuss related readings/examples of “relationship” poems in Section One of “Poetry Workshop Reader.”  I will try to look at rough drafts of your assignment 1 “relationship” poem if you have it ready.

**Wednesday, October 8: Your “Relationship” poem is due for class performance/discussion.  Bring enough copies to class for yourself and other members of the workshop, including the instructor (approximately  20).  Read, discuss, and critique your poems, one by one.

Week 3: 
Writing Imagery:  As Object, as Surreal Supplement, as Vision.

Monday, October 13: Read poems and related readings/examples of “imagery” poems in Section Two of the “Poetry Workshop Reader.”  Make sure to read the essay “Images” by Robert Hass and the essay in the Leaping Poetry anthology by Robert Bly.

Wednesday, October 15: Read poems and related readings/examples of “imagery” poems in Section Two of the “Poetry Workshop Reader.” I will look at rough drafts of assignment 2 “imagery” poem if you have it ready.

Week 4:  Beyond Imagery:  Thinking Form/ Structure in the Poem.

**Monday, October 20: “Imagery” poem assignment 2 is due for class performance/discussion.  Bring enough copies to class.

Wednesday, October 22: Read Bernadette Mayer, Sonnets, plus myriad related readings/examples of “form/structure” poems in Section Three of the “Poetry Workshop Reader.”

Week 5:
Thinking the Multiplicity of Form/Structure in the Poem.

Monday, October 27: Go over some readings/examples of “form/structure” poems in Section Three of the “Poetry Workshop Reader.” I will look at rough drafts of assignment 3 on “form/structure” if you have it ready.

**Wednesday, October 29: Your assignment 3 “Form/Structure” poem is due for class performance/discussion.  Bring enough copies to class.

Week 6:  Voicings of Otherness: 
Persona poems and/or Translations of Other and  Outside Languages.

Monday, November 3: Read related readings/examples of “persona” poems and “translation” examples and theories, Sections Four A and Four B in the “Poetry Workshop Reader.”  This assignment requires a bit more reading than in prior assignments.

Wednesday, November 5: Read related readings/examples of “persona” poems and “translation” examples and theories, Sections Four A and Four B in the “Poetry Workshop Reader.” I will look at rough drafts of your assignment 4 “persona/translation” poem if you have it ready. (You need only write a “persona” poem or a “translation” poem, you need not write both.)

Week 7: 
Moving Beyond the Lyric “I.”

**Monday, November 10: Your “persona” and/or “translation” assignment 4 poem is due.  Bring enough copies to the class.

Wednesday, November 12:  Continued discussion of your own poems in contexts of persona, examples, and translation works.  Make sure to read Jack Spicer, After Lorca, Frederico Garcia Lorca et al (and related readings/examples in the “Poetry Workshop Reader”).

Week 8: 
Towards Writing Wilder Forms and Poetic Modes: 
Experiments in Serial Juxtaposition.

Monday, November 17: Read “Anything-goes poem” examples in Section Five of the “Poetry Workshop Reader.”  We will also be begin talking about and theorizing examples of “longer” poems and collections, and discuss more specifically how to structure your own final collection of poems.

Wednesday, November 19: Read “Anything-goes poem” examples in Section Five of the “Poetry Workshop Reader.”  We will also be talking about and reading examples of “longer” poems and collections, and discussing how to structure your own final collection of poems).   Bring a draft of assignment number 5 “anything-goes” poem if you have it ready.

Week 9:
Towards Writing Wilder Forms and Poetic Modes: 
Experiments in Serial Juxtaposition.

**Monday, November 24: Assignment 5 “anything-goes” poem is due in class (bring enough copies) for performance and discussion.

Wednesday, November 26: Work on your final collection and discuss the rough outline of it in class.

Week 10: 
Working on Amping Up Your Poetry Mini-Collection.

Monday, December 1 : Work on your final collection and discuss your ideas and images in this in class. Open time for individual consultation about your poetry with the instructor.

**Wednesday, December 3:  Last day of class. “Mini-collection” of  your own work  is due. At the very least, we can celebrate your having added five poems to the silence, opacity, and entropy of the universe-as-given.

Assignments

Assignment 1 (typed, proofread, due in class on Wedesday, October 8 with enough copies for others to use in the “workshop” class session).

Write a poem in any form or length which intimately and in a non-cliched language portrays a relative (for example, a grandparent, lover, or close friend, animal) and captures the dynamics of your relationship to that person in a striking way.

You should first read the following poems (in “Relationship,” Section One, of the “Poetry Workshop Reader”) and think about how each poem works and is put together to convey a “relationship.”  You may want to “imitate” one poem in relation to this assignment, at least to get started (other examples may be photocopied throughout the semester, and you should read these examples, too):

• Li Po (as translated by Ezra Pound), "The River-Merchant's Wife:  A Letter”
• Carolyn Lau, “On the Fifth Anniversary of My Father’s Death”
• Gary Snyder, "Axe Handles" and "For/From Lou."
• Michael Ondaatje, "To a Sad Daughter"
• Pablo Neruda, “C.O.S.C”
• Eric Chock, "Tutu on the Curb," “Strawberries,” “Poem for My Father”
• Juliet S. Kono, “Yonsie, " “Grandmother and the War”
• John Yau, “Their Shadows”
• Norman Hindley, "Wood Butcher"
• Lois-Ann Yamanaka, “Parts"

Assignment 2 (typed, proofread, due in class on Monday, October 20 with enough copies for others to use in “workshop” class session):

Write a poem (on any topic or in any voice or genre) which is dominantly "imagistic" in technique and uses more than just visual images to convey its subject or concern.  (Related reading: the essay by Robert Hass, on "Images," which contains many examples of such poems from America and Japan, like tanka and haiku; essays and examples chosen by Robert Bly in Leaping Poetry, plus all the other poetic examples in Section Two of the “Poetry Workshop Reader.”)

Assignment 3 (typed, proofread, due in class on Wednesday, October 29 with enough copies for others to use in “workshop” class session):

Write a colorful and interesting poem (on any topic or in any voice, form, or genre) which uses some kind of recurring and/or traditional form to structure and enact/express its subject matter:  for example, you can write in some version of syllabics, tell a story in ballad quatrains, write a postmodern sonnet, write a haiku series, some tanka, a blank verse monologue, or use some recurring stanza form like five-line units, or a form you invent.  You can also write a loose postmodern sonnet using 14 words/phrases from somebody else which you then use in 14 lines. (Related reading:  Bernadette Mayer, Sonnets, and the  “Form/Structure” poems and examples in the “Poetry Workshop Reader.”)

Note:  For Assignment 4:  Pick either 4A (“persona) or 4B (“translation”) to write the assigned poem.  You need not do both. 

Assignment 4A (typed, proofread, due in class on Monday, November 10 with enough copies for others to use in “workshop” class session):

“Persona” Poem:  Write a poem using the device of the “dramatic monologue” (persona voice) in which you (a) write in a voice or viewpoint which is not your own; and (b) capture the values, language, and perspective of this other person (object?, animal?) in a striking and fresh way, perhaps by using a specific situation,  some moment of extremity or crisis, or expressing a crucial moment in this person’s experience. 

For examples of this genre, study all the “Persona” poems in the “Poetry Workshop Reader” as well as poems like:

• Li Po, “River Merchant’s Wife:  A Letter”
• Michael Ondaatje, “Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife”
• the soliloquies in Shakespeare,
• dramatic monologues of Richard Howard, Robert Browning (“My Last Duchess”), T. S. Eliot (“Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”),
• Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”
• Brecht’s dramatic lyrics,
• Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s “Tita” poems and works like “Parts”
• William Carlos William’s “The Widow’s Lament In Springtime” and “The Raper From Passenack”
• Juliet Kono’s “A Scolding From My Father” and "Elizabeth’s Prayer”
• and poems by Faye Kicknosway such as “Breakfast in Santa Barbara,” “Birth,” “Dear Editor,” “Book Report,” "Mr. Muscle-On,” “Gracie,” Gracie, 1967
• and other examples you might think of.

Tips:  make it vivid, make it fresh, and make the language other to your own habits; don’t preach, don’t explain too much; but take the language beyond your subjective sense and work with the form to give shape and dramatic impact to this other voice.

Optional:  Assignment 4B (typed, proofread, due in class on Monday, November 10 with enough copies for others to use in “workshop” class session): 

“Translation” Poem:  When a poet "translates" the language of another poem (whether from a foreign language, or from another poet, or from another form), the poet does not just create a "faithful" linguistic copy of the original.  In the fullest sense of “translation” as cultural-political and personal appropriation, deconstruction,  and (mis)representation, the poet very often loosely and wildly transfigures and transforms the language of the original voice to make it their own.  (See, for example, how Jack Spicer recreates the dead voice of  “Lorca” into his own poetry, by inserting and substituting new elements of his own, and you can also ponder other examples from Robert Bly in “Leaping Poetry” or Robert Lowell translating Baudealire’s “Spleen” in Imitations, not to mention Ezra Pound’s modernist experiments with voice and image in the “River Merchant” poem from Cathay.) This form of unfaithful translation is especially true in the postmodern era of cultural pastiche and postcolonial appropriation (you might think of new-narrative works by Kathy Acker or Dodie Bellamy (see Cunt-Ups), Coetze’s “Foe,” or Aime Cesaire’s play rewriting Shakespeare, “Another Tempest” or other examples).

Translate the language of another poem (or from another language), another poet, or another cultural form (for example, a prayer or a recipe or a pop lyric) in an imaginative way that makes it your own.  Try to bring over some quality from the original into your own poem (some image, some sound, some rhythm, some element of form or voice; but , above all, transform and “translate” the original enough to make it your own poem!).  (See Section Four B in the “Poetry Workshop Reader” for tactics and examples.)

Assignment 5 (typed, proofread, due in class on Monday, November 24 with enough copies for others to use in “workshop” class session): 

In this assignment, “anything goes”:  you can write a poem in any form, style, or technique you want to. 

1. You can bring to completion some draft of a poem you have already started, or write another “14-words-from-somebody-else sonnet.” 
2. If you want to do something more “experimental,” please look over the list of 56 “Experiments” which Charles Bernstein compiled from the Bernadette Mayer workshops (see Section Five of the “Poetry Workshop Reader”).  For example, number 54:  “Excuses list: Write a poem made up entirely of excuses.”   Or number 8:  “General cut-ups:  Write a poem of phrases lifted entirely from other sources.  Use one source for a poem, and then many; try different types of sources:  literary, historical, magazines, advertisements, manuals, dictionaries, instructions, travelogues, etc.”   Or number 43:  “Write a poem composed entirely of questions.”  Or number 27:  “Write a poem without mentioning any objects.” 
3. You can also invent your own experiment, and write a poem based on those instructions/ingredients/materials.   For example, some site in downtown Santa Cruz, buy a cappuccino, and write a poem based on what you see around you; or, contrariwise, write a poem without referring to anything you see around you.   Or, “I will get 25 words from somebody else and write a poem using those words.”

Final assignment:  “Mini-Collection" of your own poems (due at the end of class on Wednesday December 3, typed, proofread: please bring a copy for the instructor):

You should arrange the poems you have written along with any other materials you want to include into a creative “mini-collection” of your own work that includes: (a) an overall title that fits your aims; (b) an imaginative sequencing or grouping of your individual poems; (c) other materials, such as quotations, prose poetry pieces, an afterward or preface, and so on, as you see fit.

In effect, over the course of this semester, you have been working on creating your own original materials for a "poetic miscellany" exploring a multiplicity of techniques, combining a range of languages and different impressions.  You can now organize this personal "miscellany" around any subject or key metaphor that interests you, challenges your imagination, and expands your sense of language and possibility.  You can include prose in this final "miscellany" form as well as language, imagery, or quotations from outside sources. 

In a book of poems I wrote, for example, I used a poem called “Waking In Seoul” as the title of the overall collection, not only to suggest the ordinary material fact of waking into an Asian postmodern culture but also to suggest other dimensions of “waking in soul,” waking to cross-cultural insights and states of Buddhist meditation, and so on. The individual poems were sequenced according to the four seasons, mixed prose passages from journals, newspaper items, what other writers have said about Korea, and so on. I also referred to Korean poets and borrowed from their poems and from the Korean language, and so on.  Nothing unusual in this:  a collection of poetry usually embeds some sequence of organization by which individual poems are organized into a whole work. In my latest collection, Ananda Air:  American Pacific Lines of Flight/ Late Capitalist Weather on the Pacific Rim, I use an east-to-west trajectory to enact a line of geographical and linguistic becoming-mongrel in Asia/Pacific sites, what Deleuze calls “creating along a line of flight.” 

These examples are merely suggestive:  we will discuss an abundance of other examples, and you can ponder the recommended poetry collections by Jack Spicer and Lois Ann Yamanaka to see how poets create longer collections out of (seemingly) individual poems:  as Spicer advised, “A poem is never to be judged by itself alone.  A poem is never by itself alone” (Collected Books, 61).

 

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