English 633:  Poetic Texture

The Smooth and the Striated in Postmodern Poetry

Professor Joseph Conte

Fall 2001 

 

Aug. 28:          Introduction.  The Smooth and the Striated:  Compositional Texture in Modern Poetry.

Sep. 4:             Deleuze and Guattari:  “Introduction:  Rhizome” and “1440:  The Smooth and the Striated,” A Thousand Plateaus, 3-25, 474-500.

Sep. 11:          Pound:  The Pisan Cantos (1948), LXXIV-LXXVIII.  History in fragments, memory in tatters.  Alexander:  “The Pisan Cantos,” Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, 192-205.

Sep. 18:          Rosh Hashanah:  No Class

Sep. 25:          Pound:  The Pisan Cantos (1948), LXXIX-LXXXIV.  Fabric of time, patchwork autobiography.  Gefin:  “The Poundian Ideogram,” Ideogram, 27-46.  Bernstein:  “Thus Was It in Time,” Tale of the Tribe, 102-26.

Oct. 2:            Johnson:  ARK:  The Foundations 1-33 and The Spires 34-66.  Constructivism, assemblage, and the abstract machine.  O’Leary:  ARK as a Spiritual Phenomenon:  An Approach to Reading Ronald Johnson’s Poem.”  Selinger:  “Ronald Johnson” in Dictionary of Literary Biography 169.  See Literature Resource Center, UB Libraries Online Resources.

Also:  the arches: a Ronald Johnson site

Oct. 9:            Johnson:  ARK:  The Ramparts 67-99.  Epic closure. Deleuze and Guattari:  “Treatise of Nomadology:  The War Machine,” and “Conclusion:  Concrete Rules and Abstract Machines” in A Thousand Plateaus, 351-423, 501-516.

Oct. 16:          Stein:  Stanzas in Meditation.  Hollow obscurity, smooth space, and anti-fabric.  Schmitz:  “The Difference of Her Likeness:  Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation.”  Dydo:  Stanzas in Meditation:  The Other Autobiography.”

Oct. 23:           Ashbery:  Flow Chart.  Fertile monotony, the meditative mode, and flow/chart.  McCorkle:  Nimbus of Sensations:  Eros and Reverie in the Poetry of John Ashbery and Ann Lauterbach” in Schultz, ed. The Tribe of John.  Shoptaw:  “Anybody’s Autobiography:  Flow Chart” in On the Outside Looking Out.

Oct. 30:          Moore:  Selected Poems (1935) and What Are Years.  Tactility, quotation, and textual weaving.  Costello:  Marianne Moore:  Imaginary Possessions.  Leavell:  “Surfaces and Spacial Form,” Marianne Moore and the Visual Arts, 56-95.

Nov. 6:           Hejinian:  My Life.  Quilting, blocking, and expanding measure.  Dworkin:  “Penelope Reworking the Twill” in Contemporary Literature.  Samuels:  “Eight Justifications for Canonizing Lyn Hejinian’s My Life” in Modern Language Studies.

Nov. 13:         Blaser:  The Holy Forest.  Image-Nation series.  Seriality, randonnée.  Miriam Nichols, “Robin (Francis) Blaser,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography 165.  See Literature Resource Center, UB Libraries Online Resources.

Nov. 20:         Mackey:  School of Udhra.  Song of the Andoumboulou series.  Improvisation.  Mark Scroggins, “Nathaniel Mackey,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography 169.  See Literature Resource Center, UB Libraries Online Resources.

Nov. 27:          Zukofsky:  80 Flowers.  Proceduralism, dense obscurity, and textual striation.  Leggott:    Reading Zukofsky’s “80 Flowers”, 3-61.

Dec. 4:            Retallack:  Afterrimages.  Chance determined procedures, self-propagating error, and deletion.  Dysraphism.

 

Required Texts:

Ashbery, John.  Flow Chart.  New York:  Knopf, 1991.

Blaser, Robin.  The Holy Forest.  Toronto:  Coach House Press, 1993. 

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari.  A Thousand Plateaus:  Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1980).  Trans. Brian Massumi.  Minneapolis and London:  University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Hejinian, Lyn.  My Life.  Los Angeles:  Sun & Moon, 1987.

Johnson, Ronald.  ARK.  Albuquerque, NM:  Living Batch Press, 1996.

Mackey, Nathaniel.  School of Udhra.  San Francisco:  City Lights Books, 1993. 

Moore, Marianne.  The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore.  New York:  Macmillan, 1981.

Ezra Pound.  The Cantos.  New York:  New Directions, 1989.

Retallack, Joan.  Afterrimages.  Hanover, NH and London:  University Press of New England, 1995.

Stein, Gertrude.  Stanzas in Meditation (1932).  Los Angeles:  Sun and Moon, 1994.

Zukofsky, Louis.  Complete Short Poetry.  Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

 

Reserve List:

Alexander, Michael.  The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound.  Berkeley and Los Angeles:  U. California P, 1979.  PS3531.O82 Z539

Ashbery, John.  Other Traditions:  The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard UP, 2001.  PS221 .A84 2000

Bernstein, Michael André.  The Tale of the Tribe:  Ezra Pound and the Modern Verse Epic.  Princeton:  Princeton UP, 1980.  PS309.E64 B4

Conte, Joseph.  “The Smooth and the Striated:  Compositional Texture in the Modern Long Poem.”  Modern Language Studies 27: 2 (Spring 1997):  57-71.

---.  Unending Design:  The Forms of Postmodern Poetry.  Ithaca and London:  Cornell University Press, 1991.  PS325 .C65 1991

Costello, Bonnie.  Marianne Moore:  Imaginary Possessions.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Press,  1981.  PS3525.O5616 Z598

Dworkin, Craig Douglas.  “Penelope Reworking the Twill:  Patchwork, Writing, and Lyn Hejinian’s My Life.”  Contemporary Literature 36: 1 (Spring 1995):  58-81.

Dydo, Ulla.  Stanzas in Meditation: The Other Autobiography.” Chicago Review 35: 2 (Winter 1985):  4-20.

Géfin, Laszlo.  Ideogram:  History of a Poetic Method.  Austin:  U of Texas P, 1982.  PS323.5 .K4

Leavell, Linda.  Marianne Moore and the Visual Arts:  Prismatic Color.  Baron Rouge and London:  Louisiana State UP, 1995.  PS3525 .O5616 Z686 1995

Leggott, Michele J.  Reading Zukofsky’s “80 Flowers”.  Baltimore and London:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.  PS3549.U47 E3636 1989

Nichols, Miriam. “Robin (Francis) Blaser,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography 165:  American Poets Since World War II, Fourth Series.  Ed. Joseph Conte.  Detroit:  Gale Research Press, 1996.  57-68.  See Literature Resource Center, UB Libraries Online Resources.

O’Leary, Peter.  ARK as a Spiritual Phenomenon:  An Approach to Reading Ronald Johnson’s Poem.”  Sagetrieb 14: 3 (Winter 1995):  19-44.

Perelman, Bob.  The Trouble with Genius:  Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein, and Zukofsky.  Berkeley and Los Angeles:  University of California Press, 1994.  PS221 .P43 1994

Samuels:  “Eight Justifications for Canonizing Lyn Hejinian’s My Life.”  Modern Language Studies 27: 2 (Spring 1997):  103-19.

Schmitz, Neil.  “The Difference of her Likeness: Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation.”  Gertrude Stein and the Making of Literature.  Ed. Shirley Neuman and Ira B. Nadel.  Boston:  Northeastern University Press, 1988.

Schultz, Susan M., ed. The Tribe of John:  Ashbery and Contemporary Poetry.  Tuscaloosa and London:  University of Alabama Press, 1995.  PS3501 .S475 Z87 1995

Scroggins, Mark.  Louis Zukofsky and the Poetry of Knowledge.  Tuscaloosa and London:  University of Alabama Press, 1998.  PS3549 .U47 Z83 1998

---.  “Nathaniel Mackey,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography 169:  American Poets Since World War II, Fifth Series.  Ed. Joseph Conte.  Detroit:  Gale Research Press, 1996.  179-91.  See Literature Resource Center, UB Libraries Online Resources.

---, ed.  Upper Limit Music:  The Writing of Louis Zukofsky.  Tuscaloosa and London:  University of Alabama Press, 1997.  PS3549 .U47 Z93 1997

Selinger, Eric Murphy.  “Ronald Johnson.”  Dictionary of Literary Biography 169:  American Poets Since World War II, Fifth Series.  Ed. Joseph Conte.  Detroit:  Gale Research Press, 1996. 146-56.  See Literature Resource Center, UB Libraries Online Resources.

Shoptaw, John.  On the Outside Looking Out:  John Ashbery’s Poetry.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1994.  PS3501 .S475 Z86 1994

  

Course Requirements:

All students registered intensively will offer a 20-minute in-class presentation related to the topic and readings assigned for that class meeting.  Each presentation should be accompanied by a single-spaced  brief précis of the presentation, with a bibliography of any sources not included in the required or reserve reading lists.  Students registered intensively are required to produce a twenty-page seminar paper related to the readings or issues of the seminar.  M.A. candidates registered extensively will have to give an in-class presentation or write a brief presentation paper to receive a letter grade.

  

Last revised on Tuesday, August 27, 2001.
Copyright © 2001 Joseph M. Conte.  All Rights Reserved.