What are you forging in the smithy of your soul?

Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

In the comment box below let the members of the 2008-2009 Varsity English team know how your encounters with the reality of experience are going.

Also let us know about your attempts to forge the uncreated conscience of our race in the smithy of your soul.

You might also let us know how you are doing flying by the nets that have been flung at your soul to prevent it from flight.

When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

An Apology: No Godot

In order to make room for Galileo I had to drop something else. So Godot had to go. For that I am sorry.

It is perhaps appropriate that those who were waiting for Waiting for Godot will end the year still waiting just as Gigi and Didi end the play. On second thought, though appropriate that's also cruel and Theatre of Cruelty is Artaud not Beckett.

Appropriately, this post is absurd. Ah, yes, Theatre of the Absurd. That's Beckett.

Of course, if anyone wants to you could tackle Theatre of the Absurd or Theatre of Cruelty in Option Y.

Your Blog

1. Create a blog of your own: Go to blogger.com; follow the directions. (For a name, it might be easiest to use your first name + "apenglish". So my address might be Jamesapenglish.blogspot.com or if there were another "James" in the class maybe: JamesCapenglish.blogspot.com)

2. After you have created a blog. Post your blog address in the comment box of the project option you have chosen. This weekend (or before) I will add a link between the class blog and your individual blog, so mail me your blog address before then.

3. All of the work for your final project must be posted on your blog by the time of your final exam. (Art work should be scanned or digitally photographed and then posted on your blog.)

4. Blogs should include at least one relevant video, at least one relevant image, and at least five relevant links.

The Final Project Option i: Analyzing several works using a critical lens.

If you take this option you will create a blog devoted to analyzing several works of art (literary and non-literary) using a particular critical lens (Marxist, Freudian, Feminist, Structuralist, Post-structuralist, Russian Formalist, etc.).

1. You will write a reflection upon researching the critical lens. Show that you understand the critical lens and its significance, etc. Show how the poet lens has some relationship to the how (form) and what (content) of the literature and art you know. Develop your own thoughts about the critical lens, especially in terms of how it might help or hinder the interpretation of literature and other art. (This reflection must be accompanied by at least three works cited.) 300+ words.

2. You will write a careful, insightful explication of three works of art (novel, play, poem, film, painting, sculpture, symphony, song, photography, etc.) using the critical lens. (At least one explication must be of a literary work.) 900+ words (or 300+ each).

3. You will create a work of art of your own that makes use of the critical lens. Write a paragraph explaining the connection between your creation and the work you have done. The art & paragraph should be on your blog.

This option is new and I'm still fleshing it out.

The Final Project Option Pi: Track a motif through several works.

If you take this option you will create a blog devoted to the motif. (I will teach you how to create blogs next week.)

1. You will write an explication the use, effect, and meaning of the motif in at least three literary works. In a concluding section arrive at a bold, nuanced insight by comparing and contrasting the use of the motif in the three works. (1000+ words)

2. You will write a careful, insightful explication of how another work of art -- film, painting, sculpture, song, etc. -- makes use of the motif in a significant, relevant way. (As well as explicating the use of the motif within the single work, consider meaningful similarities and differences between its use in the non-literary work and its use in the literary works.) (300+ words).

3. You will create a work of art of your own that makes use of the motif. The work of art must be accompanied by a paragraph that discusses the use of the motif in the work you have created.

This option is new and I'm still fleshing it out a bit.

The Final Project Option Y: Groups, Movements, Schools in Drama and Fiction

Same as option X except replace poet/poem/poetry with playwright/play/drama or writer/novel (or novella)/fiction.

And for #1: instead of listing and reflecting upon ten poems, name and reflect upon one play or one novel/novella.

And for #2: instead of an explication of one poem, explicate a scene in the play or a substantial passage in the novel/novella.

The Final Project Option X: Poetry Groups, Movements, Schools

If you choose this option you will create a blog devoted to a poetry group, school, or movement.

Before writing...

^Take notes on an inadequate and impossible lecture about poetry and the arts. (Monday and Tuesday next week).
^Choose a “group,” “movement,” or “school”. (No more than two students can share a “movement” or “school”.)
^Read as many poems as you can—at least ten—by poets within the group/movement/school.

1. Write a reflection on the experience of reading the poems.

The edict of the modern and post-modern age in poetry comes from Ezra Pound: “Make it new!” Think about how the poems employ elements of poetry in inventive ways (new, strange, disorienting, alienating, surprising ways)

Think about the treatment of language: speaker’s voice, language style, diction, syntax, sound, stanza structure, line breaks, arrangement on the page. Think about the meaning and effect of the variations from traditional forms of poetry and tradition uses of language.

Think about the content: subject matter, imagery, figurative language, narration. Look for fragmentation and juxtaposition.

Post this reflection (with a list of the poems you have read and who wrote them) on your blog. 300+ words.

2. Write a careful, insightful explication of one of the poems. Post this on your blog. To see a list of last year's blogs go here. (I will help you set up a blog in class next week.) For explication help look here. Also, look at the directions above for ideas about what to explicate/explain/interpret/unfold. You're only doing one explication so it should show an imaginative, insightful grasp of the whole and of the particulars of the poem.

When explicating write about what the poem seems to say and how it says it. With modernist and post-modernist poetry the how (or form)--the speaker's voice, diction, syntax, tone, sound, line breaks, arrangement, etc.--is often as important or more important than the what (or content)--the speaker, the occasion, the subject, the plot or events, other people or characters in the poem.

Or to put it more succinctly, Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) said that James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist) isn't "writing about something. He is writing something."
300+ words

3. Research the group / movement / school and write a reflection that demonstrates that you understand the group / movement / school, its relationship to the poems you’ve read, and to your own developing ideas about literature and language. {Notice the three parts to this: 1. show that you understand the group & what it was/is all about, its significance, etc.; 2. show how the group's ideas, values, etc. has some relationship to the how (form) and what (content) of the poems you've read; 3. develop your own thoughts about the poems you've read and the group that created them, especially in terms of what you think literature should or could do, as well as what you get from & want from literature.} This post must be accompanied by at least three works cited. 300+ words

4. Find a work of art other than a poem—painting, sculpture, musical composition, dance, film, etc.—that is somehow related to the group / movement / school. In some cases—surrealism, Dadaism, futurism for example—this will be easy because these movements occurred in the visual arts too. In other cases, you’ll have to be a bit more inventive. I can help with this. Ask me.

Write a response explicating the work of art and explaining how it relates to the poetry movement. (Notice there are two parts to this. 1. Provide a close reading of the work of art. For help explicating visual art check out step four here at my friend's blog (Mr. Gallagher of Malden High School). 2. Show a relationship between the poetry you have read (& the group / movement / school of poetry) and the art-other-than-poetry. I will also provide some examples in class. 300+ words.

5. Create a work of art—poem, painting, short film, script, etc.—that relates in someway to the poems, other art, or movement / group / school. Write a paragraph explaining the connection between your creation and the work you have done. The art & paragraph should be on your blog. (If the art is visual and you don't know how to scan it or take a digital photograph let me know; I'll help.)

Language and the Imagination: Modern and Post-Modern Poets in Context (a partial list)

{The lists are tentative and are subject to change. The nature of these groupings is often a bit arbitrary, sometimes the groupings are philosophical, sometimes the groupings are geographical, etc.}

[Proto-Modernists]

Walt Whitman

Emily Dickinson

Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Symbolist Poets]

Stéphane Mallarmé

Paul Verlaine

Charles Baudelaire

Arthur Rimbaud

Jules Laforge

[Anglo- and USAmerican Modernists]

Ezra Pound

T.S. Eliot

D.H. Lawrence

William Carlos Williams

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

Hart Crane

Marianne Moore

Wallace Stevens

Mina Loy

e.e. cummings

Austin Clarke

Hugh MacDiarmid

David Jones

W.B Yeats

Dylan Thomas

[European Modernists]

C.P. Cavafy

Rainer Maria Rilke

Georg Trakl

Fernando Pessoa [and his heteronyms]

Berltolt Brecht

Anna Akhmatova

Tomas Tranströmer

Vladimir Holan

Wisława Szymborska

[Latin American Modernismo/Vanguardia]

César Vallejo

Nicanor Parra

Ruben Darío

Nicolás Guillén

José Lezama Lima

Pablo Neruda

Octavio Paz

Jorge Luis Borges

Ernesto Cardinal

[Dadaist Poets]

Tristan Tzara

Hugo Ball

Kurt Schwitters

[Surrealist Poets]

Guillaume Apollinaire

Robert Desnos

Louis Aragon

Andre Breton

Paul Éluard

Pierre Reverdy

Paul Celan

[La Generacion de 27]

Federico Garcia Lorca

Jorge Guillen

Rafael Alberti

Pedro Salinas

Vicente Aleixandre

[Italian Futurism]

F.T. Marinetti

Farfa

[Russian Futurism]

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Velemir Khlebnikov

[Portuguese and Brazilian Futurism]

Alvaro De Campo (one of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms)

Mario De Andrade

[Harlem Renaissance]

Langston Hughes

Arna Bontemps

Paul Lawrence Dunbar

James Weldon Johnson

Claude McKay

Jean Toomer

[Objectivism]

Lorine Niedecker

George Oppen

Charles Reznikoff

Louis Zukofsky

Carl Rakosi

Basil Bunting

[Beats, San Francisco Renaissance, and Post-Beat Poets]

Jack Kerouac

Allen Ginsberg

Gregory Corso

William Burroughs

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Bob Kaufman

Kenneth Rexroth

Anne Waldman

Diane DiPrima

Joanne Kyger

Richard Brautigan

Charles Bukowski

Ed Sanders

Gary Snyder

Philip Whalen

Jack Spicer

Robin Blaser

[Negritude Poets]

Aimé Césaire

René Depestre

Léopold Senghor

[“Black Mountain”/Projective Verse Poets]

Charles Olson

Robert Duncan

Robert Creeley

Denise Levertov

LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka {also, Black Arts Movement}

John Wieners

Ed Dorn

Cid Corman

Larry Eigner

Jonathan Williams

Paul Blackburn

Joel Oppenheimer

Hilda Morley

[New York School Poets: first and second generation]

Kenneth Koch

Frank O’Hara

James Schuyler

John Ashbery

Anne Waldman

Ron Padgett

Barbara Guest

Ted Berrigan

Alice Notley

Kenward Elmslie

Bernadette Mayer

Eileen Myles

David Rattray

[Black Arts Movement]

Amiri Baraka

Nikki Giovanni

Sonia Sanchez

Larry Neal

Gwendolyn Brooks

Eldridge Cleaver

Jayne Cortez

Henry Dumas

Mari Evans

[Ethnopoets and Deep Image Poets]

Gary Snyder

Jerome Rothenberg

Diane Wakoski

David Antin

Clayton Eshleman

Pierre Joris

Armand Schwerner

Nathaniel Tarn

Robert Kelly

Robert Bly

James Wright

Galway Kinnell

Linda Parker/Crane

[Confessional Poetry]

Sylvia Plath

Adrienne Rich

Anne Sexton

Robert Lowell

Sharon Olds

John Berryman

W.D. Snodgrass

Delmore Schwartz

Theodore Roethke

[Language Poets]

Ron Silliman

Jackson Mac Low

Hannah Weiner

Susan Howe

Fanny Howe

Clark Coolidge

Lyn Hejinian

Michael Palmer

Charles Bernstein

Leslie Scalapino

[Misty Poets]

Bei Dao

Gu Cheng

Duo Duo

Yang Lian

Mang Ke

Shu Ting

[“Multiculturalism”]

[Martian Poets]

Craig Raine

Christopher Reid

[USAmerican Neosurrealism]

James Tate

Bill Knott

Andre Codrescu

[Flarf]

[Post-language Poetry]

[New Formalism]

[Gloucester Modernist and Avant-Garde Poets]

Jeremy Ingalls

Gerrit Lansing

Vincent Ferrini

Charles Olson

Linda Parker/Crane