Jay Parini
D. E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing
- Office
- Axinn Center 203
- Tel
- (802) 443-5042
- parini@middlebury.edu
- Office Hours
- Spring 2024: Tues/Thurs 3:30-5:00
Courses Taught
CRWR 0175
Current
Structure of Poetry
Course Description
The Structure of Poetry
This course is a workshop for beginning students in the field of creative writing. Students will read a selection of poems each week and write their own poems, producing a portfolio of their work at the end of the term. There will be an emphasis on revision. Students will be introduced to a range of forms as well, including prose poems, epistles, the tanka, the long poem, and the sonnet. 3 hrs. lect.
Terms Taught
Requirements
CRWR 0370
Current
Advanced Fiction Workshop
Course Description
Advanced Fiction Workshop
Study and practice in techniques of fiction writing through workshops and readings in short fiction and novels. Class discussions will be based on student manuscripts and published model works. Emphasis will be placed on composition and revision. (Approval required; please email a writing sample to cohen@middlebury.edu) (Formerly ENAM 0370) (Any 100-level CRWR course) (This course is not a college writing course) 3 hrs. sem
Terms Taught
Requirements
CRWR 0375
Workshop: Poetry
Course Description
Advanced Poetry Workshop: The Walk of a Poem
As Lyn Hejinian writes, “Language makes tracks.” Poets from Chaucer to Whitman to O’Hara have used walking as a poetic method, thematic subject, narrative device, and pedestrian act. The walk is literal and imaginary, metrical and meandering; it traverses urban grids and bucolic landscapes, junctions of space, time, and lexis. In this workshop we will read the topographies of poems, focusing on lyrical cities from Paris to Harlem, Thoreauvian ambles through woods and field, and other literary wanderings and linguistic itinerancies, in order to examine how language gets made and mirrored in the act of moving through place. Students will also set out on walks through the local landscape as they produce their own work. Students will address crucial questions and challenges focused on the craft of poetry through rigorous readings, in-class writing exercises, critical discussions, collaborations, and the development of a portfolio of writing, including drafts and revisions. By the end of the course, students will have engaged deeply with the practice of poetry, established a writing discipline, honed their skills, generated new work, explored by foot, and extended their sense of the possibilities of a poem.(any 100-level CRWR course and Instructor Approval). 3 hrs. sem.
Terms Taught
Requirements
CRWR 0560
Current
Upcoming
Special Project: Writing
Course Description
Special Project: Creative Writing
Approval Required.
Terms Taught
CRWR 0701
Current
Upcoming
Senior Thesis:Creative Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking one-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.
Terms Taught
ENAM 0312
Modern Poetry
Course Description
Modern Poetry
This course will examine the nature and achievement of the major modern poets of Britain and America during the modern period, beginning with the origins of poetic modernism in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. The central figures to be studied are William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and W.H. Auden. The course will conclude with a look at some after-echoes of modernism in the work of Elizabeth Bishop and others. Two papers, one exam, with occasional oral presentations in class 3 hrs. lect./disc.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0316
Poetry and Spiritual Tradition
Course Description
Poetry and the Spiritual Tradition
In this course we will examine the long and intimate connection between poetry and spirituality, looking especially at the influence of Christian thinking on such English and American poets as John Donne, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T.S. Eliot. The course will begin with a study of the King James Version of the Book of Psalms, which deeply affected later British and American poetry. We will also read early Taoist and Islamic poets, including Lao Tse and Rumi. The course will conclude with a look at the work of several contemporary poets: Charles Wright, Louis Glück, and Mary Oliver. While this course is primarily online, on-campus students will have opportunities to meet in person with fellow students and the professor in small groups and during office hours, if circumstances allow. Off-campus students will be accommodated with additional optional online opportunities to connect. 3 hrs. lct.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0442
Religious Poetry
Course Description
Batter My Heart: Religious Poetry from the Psalms to Mary Oliver
In this seminar we will look closely at some of the major religious poets (broadly defined to include a variety of traditions) in the course of English and American poetry from the 17th century writers John Donne and George Herbert to the contemporary American poet Mary Oliver. Major figures will look at include Donne, Herbert, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Charles Wright, and Mary Oliver. There will be prose selections from various poets and spiritual writers, including Emerson.
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENAM 0500
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required.
Terms Taught
ENAM 0700
Senior Thesis:Critical Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis. All critical thesis writers also take the Senior Thesis Workshop (ENAM 700Z) in either Fall or Spring Term.
Terms Taught
ENAM 0701
Senior Essay: Creative Writing
Course Description
Senior Essay: Creative Writing
Discussions, workshops, tutorials for those undertaking one-term projects in the writing of fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction.
Terms Taught
ENGL 0312
Modern Poetry
Course Description
Modern Poetry
This course will examine the nature and achievement of the major modern poets of Britain and America during the modern period, beginning with the origins of poetic modernism in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. The central figures to be studied are William Butler Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, and W.H. Auden. The course will conclude with a look at some after-echoes of modernism in the work of Elizabeth Bishop and others. Two papers, one exam, with occasional oral presentations in class 3 hrs. lect./disc.(Formerly ENAM 0312)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0316
Poetry and Spiritual Tradition
Course Description
Poetry and the Spiritual Tradition
In this course we will examine the long and intimate connection between poetry and spirituality, looking especially at the influence of Christian thinking on such English and American poets as John Donne, George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and T.S. Eliot. The course will begin with a study of the King James Version of the Book of Psalms, which deeply affected later British and American poetry. We will also read early Taoist and Islamic poets, including Lao Tse and Rumi. The course will conclude with a look at the work of several contemporary poets: Charles Wright, Louis Glück, and Mary Oliver. While this course is primarily online, on-campus students will have opportunities to meet in person with fellow students and the professor in small groups and during office hours, if circumstances allow. Off-campus students will be accommodated with additional optional online opportunities to connect. 3 hrs. lct. (Formerly ENAM 0316)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0442
Religious Poetry
Course Description
Batter My Heart: Religious Poetry from the Psalms to Mary Oliver
In this seminar we will look closely at some of the major religious poets (broadly defined to include a variety of traditions) in the course of English and American poetry from the 17th century writers John Donne and George Herbert to the contemporary American poet Mary Oliver. Major figures will look at include Donne, Herbert, Wordsworth, Hopkins, Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Charles Wright, and Mary Oliver. There will be prose selections from various poets and spiritual writers, including Emerson. (Formerly ENAM 0442)
Terms Taught
Requirements
ENGL 0500
Current
Upcoming
Special Project: Lit
Course Description
Special Project: Literature
Approval Required. (Formerly ENAM 0500)
Terms Taught
ENGL 0700
Current
Upcoming
Senior Thesis:Critical Writing
Course Description
Senior Thesis: Critical Writing
Individual guidance and seminar (discussions, workshops, tutorials) for those undertaking one-term projects in literary criticism or analysis. All critical thesis writers also take the Senior Thesis Workshop (ENAM 700Z) in either Fall or Spring Term. (Formerly ENAM 0700)
Terms Taught
Publications
Singing in Time. Dundee (Scotland): J.W.B. Laing, 1972. (poems)
Theodore Roethke: An American Romantic. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979. (criticism)
The Love Run. Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1980. (novel)
Anthracite Country. New York: Random House, 1982. (poems)
The Patch Boys. New York: Henry Holt, 1986. (novel)
An Invitation to Poetry. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1987. (textbook)
Town Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1988. (poems)
The Last Station. New York: Henry Holt, 1990. (novel)
Bay of Arrows. New York: Henry Holt, 1992. (novel)
Columbia History of American Poetry, editor, with Brett Millier. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
Columbia Anthology of American Poetry (1995), editor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
John Steinbeck: A Biography. New York: Henry Holt, 1995.
Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain, editor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. (criticism)
Benjamin’s Crossing. New York: Henry Holt, 1996. (novel)
Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Literature and Politics. New York: Columbia University Press„ 1997. (criticism)
Beyond “The Godfather” : Italian American Writers on the Real Italian American Experience, editor, with A. Kenneth Ciongoli. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1997.
House of Days. New York: Henry Holt, 1998. (poems)
The Norton Book of American Autobiography, editor. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.
Robert Frost: A Life. New York: Henry Holt, 1999.
The Apprentice Lover. New York: HarperCollins, 2002. (novel)
Passage to Liberty: The Story of Italian Immigration and the Rebirth of America, with A. Kenneth Ciongoli. New York: Random House, 1992.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature (2004) – four volumes, editor. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
World Writers in English, editor. New York: Scribner, 2004.
One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
The Art of Teaching. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems. New York: Braziller, 2005.
The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry, editor. Boston: Wadsworth, 2005.
Why Poetry Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. (criticism)
Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America. New York: Doubleday, 2008. (criticism)
Last Steps: Late Writings of Leo Tolstoy, editor. London and New York: Penguin, 2009.