WAGS-AMLT 265: American Women Poets

Middlebury College
Department of American Literature and Civilization

S Y L L A B U S

American Literature/Women's and Gender Studies 265 – American Women Poets

Course Requirements

In this course we will read the work of seven major American female poets, along with poems by many others and critical articles about their work (via ERes).  While our major focus will be on the poems themselves, we will discuss them in the context of the poets' lives, of literary history, and of gender politics in the times in which they wrote.  Over the course of the semester, you will write a brief discussion paper about each of the seven poets, and two longer (1500-1800 word) papers.  You will also take a three-hour final exam, during the fall examination period.

Academic Honesty and Honor Code

You may talk with one another about your paper assignments and about the works we are studying, and you may talk with fellow students or tutors about your writing; but all the words in your written work should be your own unless they are included in quotation marks and the source is cited. You must provide a source for ideas you have borrowed as well as for words.  I strongly encourage you to write the "discussion papers" for this course without consulting critical works (in the library or on-line), but if you do, you must list everything you have read in a bibliography, and give specific page references for quotations and ideas you have used, as you must in your longer, formal papers.  The accepted citation style in literary study is The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers,which gives models of proper citation for both paper and electronic sources.  It is available at the library, at the college store, and on-line via a link on the Middlebury Library and Information Services (LIS) web page.  You must write and sign the full Honor Code Statement on each essay you prepare for this course, and on the final exam.

Books Available at the College Store

Emily Dickinson, Poems (Franklin edition)

Marianne Moore, Complete Poems (Penguin)

Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems (Harper)

Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979 (Noonday)

Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems (Harper)

Denise Levertov, Poems 1960-67 (New Directions)

Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe (Norton)

Lyn Hejinian, My Life (Green Integer)

Useful Websites

Electronic Poetry Center: http://www.epc.buffalo.edu

Modern American Poetry: http://www.uiuc.edu/maps/index.htm

Academy of American Poets:  http://www.poets.org

American Literature and Civilization Department Home Page: http://go.middlebury.edu/alc

ERes Home Page: http://eres.middlebury.edu/courseindex.asp

(search for AMLT 0265, password is 5264bm)

And websites devoted to individual poets:

Dickinson: www.emilydickinson.org

Elizabeth Bishop at Vassar  http://projects.vassar.edu/bishop/

Sylvia Plath http://www.plathonline.com/

A Gwendolyn Brooks Page  http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/brooks/brooks.html

Adrienne Rich Station  http://www.adriennerich.hpg.ig.com.br/resources.htm

Week I

Tuesday, September 14 – Introduction and Business

Thursday, September 16 – Emily Dickinson I .  Read Dickinson poems #255 The Drop that Wrestles, #260 I'm nobody! Who are you, #268 Why – do they shut me out of Heaven? #276 Civilization Spurns the Leopard, #282 We play at Paste, #336 Before I got my eye put out, #357 I felt my life with both my hands, #365 I know that He exists, #373 This World is not Conclusion, #407 One need not be Chamber – to be Haunted, #428 We grow accustomed to the dark, #477 He fumbles at your Soul, #479 Because I could not stop for Death, #581 Of Course I prayed, #605 I am live – I guess, #620 Much Madness is divinest Sense, #804 Ample Make This Bed, #867 I felt a Cleaving in my Mind.  Read also: Alicia Ostriker, "I'm Nobody: Women's Poetry 1620-1960" (ERes) (Discussion Paper on Dickinson due in class)

Week II

Tuesday, September 21 – Dickinson, cont.  Read Dickinson poems  #185 A Wife at Daybreak I shall be, #264 Forever at His side to walk, #267 Rearrange a Wife's affection, #269 Wild Nights – wild nights, #270 I shall keep singing, #319 Of Bronze and Blaze, #321 Blazing in Gold and Quenching in Purple, #348 I would not paint a picture, #359 A Bird came down the Walk, #367 I tend my flowers for Thee, #381 I cannot Dance upon my toes, #418 Your riches – taught me – Poverty, #446 This was a Poet, #448 I died for Beauty – but was scarce, #459 'Why do I love you, Sir?' #495 The Day undressed – Herself, #537 I reckon – when I count at all, #656 I started Early – took my Dog, #706 I cannot live with You, #772 Essential Oils are wrung, #905 Split the Lark – and you'll find the Music, #1152 The Wind took up the Northern Things, #1715 A Word Made Flesh is seldom, #1742 In Winter in my Room.

Thursday, September 23 -  Dickinson, cont. Read Dickinson poems #194 Title Divine, is mine, #312 I can wade Grief, #339 I like a look of agony, #340 I felt a funeral, in my Brain, #353 I'm ceded – I've stopped being Theirs, #360 The Soul has Bandaged moments, #401 Dare you see a Soul at the 'White Heat'?, , #409 The Soul Selects her own Society, #466 I dwell in Possibility, #473 I was the slightest in the House, #475 Myself was formed – a Carpenter, #520 God made a little Gentian, #579 The Soul unto itself, #591 I heard a Fly buzz – when I died, #598 The Brain is wider than the sky, #630 The Soul's Superior instants, #633 I saw no Way – the Heavens were stitched, #649 No rack can torture me, #660 I took my Power in my Hand, #729 The Props assist the House, #Behind me – dips Eternity, #764 My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun, #926 I stepped from Plank to Plank, #1696 There is a solitude of space. Read also:Cynthia Griffin Wolff, "Emily Dickinson," and Adrienne Rich, "Vesuvius at Home" (ERes)

Week III

Tuesday, September 28 – Marianne Moore I.  Read poems by Moore:  "The Steeple-Jack," "The Jerboa," "The Frigate Pelican," "The Fish," "In this Age of Hard Trying..." "Critics and Connoisseurs," "In the Days of Prismatic Color," "A Grave." (Discussion Paper on Moore due in class).

Thursday, September 30 – Moore, cont. Read poems by Moore:  "Marriage," "To a Snail," "Silence," "What are Years?" "Bird-witted" "An Octopus."

Week IV

Tuesday, October 5 – Moore, cont,  Read poems by Moore:  "The Pangolin," "The Paper Nautilus," "The Mind is an Enchanting Thing," "In Distrust of Merits," "Baseball and Writing."  Read also:  Moore, "Humility, Concentration and Gusto" (ERes)

Thursday, October 7 –  Brooks I.  Read poems by Brooks:  A Street in Bronzeville (all sections), Annie Allen (all sections).(Discussion Paper on Brooks Due in class)

Week V

Tuesday (which is Thursday) October  12 – Brooks, cont. Read poems by Brooks:  "The Bean Eaters," "We Real Cool," "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters...." "The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock," "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till," "The Lovers of the Poor." Read also:"A Symposium on Gwendolyn Brooks" (ERes)

Thursday, October 14 – Midterm Break

Week VI

Tuesday, October 19 –  Elizabeth Bishop I.  Read poems by Bishop:  "The Map," "Florida," "The Fish," "The Bight," "At the Fishhouses," "Insomnia," "Faustina, or Rock Roses," "Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore," "The Shampoo,"  "Brazil, January 1, 1502," "Filling Station." (Discussion Paper on Bishop due in class)

Thursday, October 21 – Bishop, cont. Read poems by Bishop:  "Visits to St. Elizabeth's," "Under the Window: Ouro Preto," "In the Waiting Room," "Crusoe in England," "The Moose," "One Art," "The End of March," "Five Flights Up," "Pink Dog," "Sonnet" (p. 192) Read also:  Lee Edelman, "The Geography of Gender" (ERes)

Friday, October 22 – First Paper Due by 5:00 p.m in my office, 203 Adirondack

Week VII

Tuesday, October 26 – Denise Levertov I  - Read poems by Levertov:  "A Sequence," "The Rainwalkers," "Night on Hatchet Cove," "Six Variations," "Come into Animal Presence," "Three Meditations," "The Jacob's Ladder," "The Tulips," "The Necessity," "Song for Ishtar," "The Ache of Marriage," "Claritas"Read Also:Levertov, "Some Notes on Organic Form" (ERes) (Discussion Paper on Levertov due in class)

Thursday, October 28 – Levertov, cont.  Read poems by Levertov:  "O Taste and See," "About Marriage," "The Wings," "The Unknown," "Joy," "As it Happens," "A Lamentation," "Life at War," "Didactic Poem," "Second Didactic Poem," "September 1961," "Advent 1966" (handout).  Read Also:Lorrie Smith,  "Songs of Experience: Levertov's Political Poetry" (ERes)

Week VIII

Tuesday, November 2 – Sylvia Plath I.  Read poems by Plath:  "The Disquieting Muses," "Metaphors," "Electra on Azalea Path," "The Colossus," "Poem for a Birthday," "Stillborn," "Morning Song," "In Plaster," "Tulips" (Discussion Paper on Plath due in class)

Thursday, November 4 – Plath, cont.  Read poems by Plath:  "Blackberrying," "Crossing the Water," "Elm," "The Rabbit Catcher," "Berck-Plage," "Burning the Letters," "A Birthday Present," "The Arrival of the Bee-box."

Week IX

Tuesday, November 9 – Plath, cont.  Read poems by Plath:  "The Applicant," "Daddy," "Medusa," "The Jailier," "Lesbos," "Fever 103º," "Cut," "The Tour," "Ariel."  Read also: Margaret Dickie, "Seeing is Re-seeing: Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath." (ERes)

Thursday, November 11 – Plath, cont.  Read poems by Plath:  "Death & Co." "Sheep in Fog," "Poppies in July," "Poppies in October," "Lady Lazurus," "Thalidomide," "Winter Trees," "Childless Woman," "Edge." Read also:Anna Tripp, "Saying I:  Sylvia Plath as Tragic Author or Feminist Text?" (ERes)

Week X

Tuesday, November 16 – Adrienne Rich I.  Read poems by Rich:  "Storm Warnings," "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," "An Unsaid Word," "Ideal Landscape," "Living in Sin," "The Diamond Cutters," "Letter from the Land of Sinners," "The Knight," "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law." Read also:Rich, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision" (ERes) (Discussion Paper on Rich due in class)

Thursday, November 17 -  Rich, cont.  Read poems by Rich:  "A Marriage in the Sixties," "The Roofwalker," "Prospective Immigrants Please Take Note," "Necessities of Life," "'I am in Danger – Sir,'" "The Demon Lover," "Women," "Planetarium," "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children," "Trying to Talk with a Man," "When We Dead Awaken," "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," "Diving into the Wreck."

Week XI

Tuesday, November 23 –  Rich, cont.  Read poems by Rich:  "Power," "Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev," Twenty-one Love Poems, "Paula Becker to Carla Westhoff," "A Woman Dead in Her Forties," "Mother-right," "Transcendental Etude," "Integrity," "Mother-in-Law," "Grandmothers"  Read also:Rich, "It is the Lesbian in Us...." and "The Hermit's Scream" (ERes)

Thursday, November 25 – Thanksgiving

Week XII

Tuesday, December 1 – Hejinian I.  Read all of My Life.  (Discussion paper on Hejinian due in class)

Thursday, December 3 –. Hejinian, cont.  Re-read My Life. Read also:Craig Dworkin, "Penelope Re-Working the Twill" (ERes)

Week XIII

Tuesday, December 7 –  Hejinian, cont.  Review My Life.Read also:Hejinian, "The Rejection of Closure" (ERes)

Thursday, December 9 –.Closure, or the rejection of closure

Friday, December 10 - Final Paper  (1600-1800 words) due by 5 p.m. in my office

***** Final Exam:  Tuesday, December 21, 2004, 9-12 am *****

(an earlier make-up exam will be offered)