English 633 Poetic Texture

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.