English 202:

Modern British and American Poetry

            Spring 2008

Stephen C. Behrendt
319 Andrews; 472-1806
Office: 1230-130 TR
and by appointment

Email Dr. Behrendt

                Kazimir Malevich, Still Life (1913)

Tentative Schedule of Required Readings
     – from Modern Poems: A Norton Introduction, 2nd ed.

Jan 15 T Introductory work: reading poetry

Jan 17 R What is “modern,” and what does it mean for British and American poetry?
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Jan 22 T Thomas Hardy

“Hap,” “Neutral Tones,” “The Subalterns,” “The Darkling Thrush,” “Channel Firing,” “I Found Her Out There,” “The Voice,” “The Oxen,” “The Harbour Bridge”

Jan 24 R Hardy

Jan  25 F Last day to drop this course without it appearing on your permanent record
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Jan 29 T William Butler Yeats:

“The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “When You Are Old,” “The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland,” “The Cap and Bells,” “September 1913,” “The Magi,” “The Wild Swans at Coole,” “Easter 1916,” “The Second Coming,” “A prayer for My Daughter,” “Among School Children,” “Lapis Lazuli,” “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”

Jan 31 R Yeats
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Feb  5 T Robert Frost:

“Mending Wall,” “The Road Not Taken,” “An Old Man’s Winter Night,” “The Oven Bird,” “Birches,” “Range-Finding,” “Fire and Ice,” “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Design”

 Feb  7 R Frost
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Feb 12 T William Carlos Williams:

“Tract,” “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” “Spring and All,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “Portrait of a Lady,” “This Is Just to Say,” “The Yachts,” “The Young Housewife,” “Dance”

Feb 14 R Williams
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Feb 19 T Marianne Moore: “The Fish,” “Poetry,” “A Grave,” “The Pangolin,” “What Are Years?”

Feb 21 R John Crowe Ransom: “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter,” “Here Lies a Lady,” “Dead Boy,” “The Equilibrists”
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Feb 26 T T. S. Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

Feb 28 R  First Brief Paper due IN CLASS today
                Edna St. Vincent Millay: “First Fig,” “Recuerdo,” “Love is Not All,” “To a Calvinist in Bali”
                Amy Lowell: “Patterns” [handout]
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Mar 4   T e. e. cummings:

“all in green went my love riding,” “the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls,” “a man who had fallen among thieves,” “my father moved through dooms of love,” “maggie and milly and molly and may,” ‘now comes the good rain farmers pray for (and”; plus “anyone lived in a pretty how town,” “Buffalo Bill’s defunct,” “next of course to god america I” “a leaf falls” [handouts]

Mar 6  R cummings
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Mar 11 T Langston Hughes:

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “The Weary Blues,” “Brass Spittoons,” “Morning After,” “Theme for English B”

Mar 13 R Countee Cullen: Yet Do I Marvel,” “Incident,” “Heritage”
                Gwendolyn Brooks: “A Song in the Front Yard,” “Young Africans,” “The Boy Died in My Alley”
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Mar 16 - 22 Spring Break – no classes
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Mar 25 T Dylan Thomas:

“The Hand That Signed the paper,” “The Force That through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower,” “The Hunchback in the Park,” “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London,” “Fern Hill,” “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”

Mar 27 R Amy Clampitt: “Beach Glass,”“Gooseberry Fool,” “A Cure at Porlock”
                Adrienne Rich: “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers,” “Diving into the Wreck”
                Elizabeth Bishop: “The Fish”
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Apr 1  T Seamus Heaney:

“Requiem for the Croppies,” “Bogland,” “Punishment,” “The Strand at Lough Beg,” “The Otter,” “The Harvest Bow,” “Alphabets”

Apr 3  R Heaney
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Apr  8 T Paul Muldoon: “The Big House,” “The Weepies,” “Making the Move,” “The Right Arm” “Brock”
              Gary Soto: “The Map,” “The Tale of Sunlight,” “Making Money: Drought Year in Minkler, California,” “Oranges”
              Rita Dove: “The House Slave,” “Banneker,” “The Event,” “Weathering Out,” “The Great Palaces of Versailles”

Apr 10 R Alberto Ríos: “Madre Sofia,” “A Dream of Husbands,” “A Man Then Suddenly Stops Moving”
                Louise Erdrich: “Indian Boarding School: The Runaways,” “Francine’s Room,” “That Pull from the Left,” “Windingo”
                Kathy Song: “Leaving,” “Beauty and Sadness,” “Lost Sister,” “Heaven”

Apr 11 F Last day to withdraw from this course without a grade appearing on your permanent record
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Apr 15 T  Second Brief Paper due IN CLASS today
                some time for catching up

Apr 17 R Introductory conversation about “regional writing” and poetry
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Apr 22 T Nebraska Presence: An Anthology of Poetry

Poems will be selected by class members. A separate handout listing the selected poems will be distributed in class and posted on line.

Apr 24 R Nebraska Presence
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Apr 29 T Nebraska Presence

May   1 R Nebraska Presence
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Final Examination: 10:00 - 12:00 noon, Thursday, 8 May