SYLLABUS FOR POETRY WORKSHOP 1

POETRY WORKSHOP 1

Syllabus

References:

Della Volpe, Galvano. Critique of Taste. New York:  New Left Books, 1978.  (CT)

Adorno, Theodor W. Notes to Literature.Volume 1. Translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen.  New York:  Columbia University Press, 1991.  (NL)

Eagleton, Terry and Drew Milne, eds. Marxist Literary Theory, A Reader. Cambridge, Massachusetts:  Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1996.    (MLT)

Perrine, Laurence and Thomas R. Arp.  Sound and Sence, An Introduction to Poetry.  Orlando, Florida:  Harcourt Brace and Company, 1992. (SS)

Gross, Harvey and Robert McDowell. Sound and Form in Modern Poetry. 2^nd Edition. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1996.  (SFMP)

Hosek, Chaviva and Patricia Parker. Lyric Poetry, Beyond New Criticism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985.  (LPBNC)

Forche, Carolyn.  Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. New York:  W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. (AF)

I.  DEFINITIONS/THEORY

Selections from Galvano Della Volpe, Critique of Taste, including, “Image versus Idea,” (15-19); “The Poetic Discourse,”  (20 – 23);  “History as Humus,” (24 -25); “II.  The Semantic Key to Poetry;” and “the Semantic Dialectic” (171 – 200).

T.W. Adorno, “On Lyric Poetry and Society,”  CT, 37-54.

Ernst Bloch, “Marxism and Poetry (1935),” in MLT, 84 – 90.

II. FORM:  Elements, Devices, Modes, Conventions

Perrine and Arps’s Sound and Sense will be used as a kind of general textbook as it presents most, if not all, of the elements of poetry, including,  “Denotation and Connotation, Imagery, Figurative Language – simile, metaphor, personification, apostrophe, metonymy; symbol, allegory; paradox, overstatement, understatement, irony; allusion, meaning and idea, tone, musical devices, rhythm and meter, sound and meaning, and pattern”), plus two chapters on “bad poetry and good” and “good poetry and great.”

(Illustrations of the various elements may be derived from sample “good poems,” written  either in Filipino or English, specifically those appearing on FB and in Arkibo.)

“Prosody as Rhythmic Cognition,” SFMP, 8 – 21.

“Imagism and Visual Poetry,” SFMP, 99 – 124.

Northrop Frye, “Approaching the Lyric,”  LPBNC, 31 -37.

Jonathan Culler, “Changes in the Study of the Lyric,” LPBNC, 38-54.

John Hollander, “Breaking Into Song:  Some Notes on Refrain,”  LPBNC, 73-92.

John Brenkman, “The Concrete Utopia of Poetry:  Blake’s “A Poison Tree,” LPBNC, 182-192.

David Bromwich, “Parody, Pastiche, and Allusion,” LPBNC, 328-344.

III.  POETRY AND IDEOLOGY/THE USES OF POETRY

T.W. Adorno, “Commitment (1962),” MLT, 187-203.

Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, “On Literature as an Ideological Form,” MLT, 275-295.

Carolyn Forche, “’Introduction’ to Against Forgetting,” AF, 29-48.

(Sample poems from Against Forgetting will be read to illustrate the main points about the uses and functions of poetry in the struggle.)

IV.  WORKSHOPS on poems written by participants. (This part may also include a demonstration of how social and political issues may precisely be written into the poem with full aesthetic effect and impact.)

V.  PROJECTS, PLANS,  TASKS  (Arkibong Bayan, et al,, c/o Mon)

WRITING ACTIVITY: Each participant should be able to write, at least, one lyric poem during the course for presentation and submission to the workshop.

Prepared by:

NONI V. QUEANO/5December2010