Finding Twenty-First Century Poems...

Here is SUNY-Buffalo's list of print and web poetry magazines. The page has hyperlinks to the magazines themselves.

Jacket is one of my favorite online poetry magazines. It's based in Australia but includes poems and essays on poetry from around the world. (Lots of USAmerican poems and prose.) This page shows the contents of every Jacket, issues 1 through 35. The page also has a search link. Using the search link I looked for poems containing miscellaneous theme-words and I had found some interesting and relevant essays and poems.

This page set up by the Poetry Foundation might help too. It has links to poems organized by "category".

Poems from the end of the twentieth century can be used in this category.

Examples: Cover, Introduction, and Table of Contents

[Cover page]

“Stating the Case of the Underdog”:

Protest Songs, Laments, Documentary Poems, Blues, Cante Jondo, and so on

James Cook

Elizabeth Johnson Tsang

College Board AP Institute:

AP Literature and Composition

July 28, 2008

*******

[Introduction]

Introduction: Under and Below, Down and Out, Black and Blue

Strangely, it was while reading a Ford Maddox Ford quotation about Jean Rhys’s first novel that I came upon the theme of this poetry anthology. Francis Wyndham quotes Ford as writing that Rhys demonstrates “a terrifying instinct and a terrific—an almost lurid!—passion for stating the case of the underdog.” Wyndham goes on to write that without what Ford calls “a singular instinct for form” Rhys’s work might become bathetic: “sentimental or sensational.” Conversely, without the unflinching moral depiction of the downtrodden the formal acuity might seem superficial, no more than a shiny trinket. However, by championing the underdog—by revealing the underdog—with a fine (and innovative) sense of the novelist’s art (especially narration and characterization) Rhys produced “original art” that is both “exquisite and deeply disturbing.”

I hope these poems live up to Rhys’s fiction. All of the poems might be said to “state the case of the underdog.” The forms, however, are quite diverse.

Some poems are laments (“The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” “I reason, Earth is short,” “Jim Dunn’s Eviction”). Some are blues (“Blues at Dawn” and “This Morning I Have Got to Keep Moving”). Some are deep songs, cantes jondos, possessed by duende. (Federico García Lorca wrote, “The duende…is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought. [I]t is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation.”)

At least one poem is a wound (“Billie”). Another is an ache (“The ache of Marriage”). Yet another is a meditation on death (“The Fool on the Football Wars”).

There is a Whitmanic song of protest (“Cap’tain Zombi”). And there is an epistolary protest, a kind of prose poem (“Dear Mr. President…”). Some poems are analogous to activist documentary films (“Yiddish Speaking Socialists of the Lower East Side,” “Nicaraguan Canto,” “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” “Eugene Delacroix Says,” “Sept 17 / Aug 29, ’88”). Some poems are a combination of critique and witness (“London” and “After Lorca”).

In the anthology there is an ekphrastic poem—a poem responding to visual art (“Sugar Cane”). One piece is a poetic play (“Plumbing”). (Since there are prose poems can there not be play poems?) In another set of poems Vasko Popa employs a speaker who uses the language of children’s games; such games, of course, have losers: “There’s no place he doesn’t look/And looking he loses himself.”

The anthology contains three songs (“Song: Men of England,” “Straight to Hell,” “Fairytale of New York), a protest sonnet (“England in 1819”), and a Donne valediction, a poem of parting with ample characteristic conceits. (The later poem’s private defiance of the sorrowful moment seems analogous in some ways to the public defiance of injustice in the political protest poems within the anthology.)

Among the poems whose lines are liberated from the left margin, there are many variations of William Carlos Williams’ variable foot line and some Olsonian projective verse (“Song 3,” “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” “Nicaraguan Canto,” “Yiddish Speaking Socialists…”). There are poets playing with the net down (CAConrad), poets playing with the net up (Donne, Shelley, Blake), and poets playing with the net (Dickinson and Niedecker).

Poets are makers. (“Poein,” from which “poet” is derived, is classical Greek for “to make.”) And these poems are made of private sorrows and socio-political injustice, of resignation and resilience, of protest and witness, of song and declaration, of chant and moan, of empathy and defiance; all make “cases,” so to speak, for the wounded, the aching, the degraded, the alienated, the downtrodden. These are poems for and of the underdog.

*******
[Table of Contents]

“Stating the Case of the Underdog”:

Protest Songs, Laments, Documentary Poems, Blues, Cante Jondo, and so on

THE PERSONAL AND THE POLITICAL

1. “A Valediction: Of Weeping,” John Donne a 17^th century poem
2. “Song: Men of England,” Percy Bysshe Shelley a 19^th century poem
3. “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime,” William Carlos Williams a 20^th century poem
4. “England in 1819,” Percy Bysshe Shelley a sonnet
5. “Straight to Hell,” Joe Strummer (performed by The Clash) a song lyric
6. “Sugar Cane,” James William Cook a poem I have written
7. “Jim Dunn’s Eviction,” James William Cook a poem I have written
8. “The Fool on the Football Wars,” James William Cook a poem I have written

WITNESS AND PROTEST

9. “After Lorca,” Robert Creeley
10. “The Songs of Maximus, Song 3” Charles Olson
11. “Eugene Delacroix Says,” Ed Dorn
12. “London,” William Blake
13. “Gloucester Poem,” Amanda Porter
14. from “Nicaraguan Canto,” Ernesto Cardenal, translation Robert Pring-Mill
15. “Yiddish Speaking Socialists of The Lower East Side,” Ed Sanders
16. “Cap’tain Zombi,” René Depestre, translation Joan Dayan
17. from “Wichita Vortex Sutra” Allen Ginsberg
18. “Sept 17 / Aug 29, ’88,” Alice Notley
19. “Dear Mr. President There Was Egg Shell under Your Desk Last Night in My Dream!” CAConrad

BLUES & CANTE JONDO (DEEP SONG)

20. “Confusion,” Federico García Lorca, translation James William Cook
21. “Blues at Dawn” Langston Hughes
22. [301], Emily Dickinson
23. “This Morning I have Got to Keep Moving/Oral Histories and Family Sketches,” Sam Cornish
24. “Valentine’s Day,” CAConrad
25. “Fairytale of New York,” Shane MacGowan (performed by The Pogues)
26. “Plumbing,” Musa McKim
27. “The Ache of Marriage,” Denise Levertov
28. “Billie,” John Wieners
29. [“Who was Mary Shelley?”], Lorine Niedecker

DUENDE IN CHILD’S PLAY

30. from “Games,” Vasko Popa

Note: In case you noticed the directions for the assignment I did this summer were different than the directions I gave to you. So make sure you follow the directions instead of just following what I've done.

Literary Terms

Post definitions and examples in the comments box by pumpkin time on Monday, January 12.

Click here for literary terms.

What's Going On?

* College Essay (either a new draft or same as last quarter) Due 12/19

* Blog posts about the plays (Ibsen, Lorca, Irish, USAmerican) Due 12/19 (unless you use a letter, then due 1/5)

* Compare and Contrast Bildungsroman Essay Due 12/19 (unless you use a letter, then due 1/5)

* Personal Poetry Anthology Due dates and directions here

* Memorize and be able to analyze a sonnet (look here here and here) for the midyear exam (D-block 12/22, F-block 12/23) (Notes: On Monday 1/5 F-block should be prepared to "teach" the two sonnets you have read and taken notes on. Both classes will also do a fun activity on Monday with Sonnet 130 and a postmodern poem by Harryette Mullen called "Dim Lady".)

* Learn several literary terms for the exam. (Look here for last year's list and student-researched definitions. More on this after break.)

* Read something that you don't have to. I recommend The Best American Nonrequired Reading. It's put together by high schoolers in the Bay Area of California and new edition comes out every year.

* If you're feeling up for some intellectual stimulation. I will be giving a lecture on Charles Olson's Maximus Poems called Polis is What? on Saturday, January 3 at three in the afternoon at the Cape Ann Museum on Middle Street.

Personal Poetry Anthology

AP English Literature and Composition

Personal Poetry Anthology

Due:
1. Email me your theme over vacation.
2. Bring typed copies of seven of the fifteen poems to class on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 (the epiphany, twelfth night)
3. Bring a draft of one of your own poems to class on Monday, January 12, 2009
4. Bring a draft of the introduction to class on Monday, January 12, 2009
5. Completed project is due Friday, January 16, 2009 (no extension letters will be accepted)

Theme: ___________________________________

For this assignment, you will prepare a poetry anthology. For our purposes, poetry will include song lyrics. The anthology will be unified by a common theme, and must consist of the following minimal requirements:

Criteria

1. A late sixteenth or seventeenth

century poem (Elizabethan,

Metaphysical, Cavalier)

2. A nineteenth century poem

(Romantic, Gothic, Victorian)

3. A twentieth century poem

(modern or post-modern)

4. A twenty-first century poem

(post-modern)

5. Lyrics to song
6. A sonnet (or poem written in

another traditional form: sestina,

terza rima, rondeau, villanelle, etc.)

7. A poem translated

from another language

8. A poem that you have written

containing an allusion

9. A poem that you have written

using a traditional or invented form

10. A poem that you have written

that is a strict, loose, or homophonic translation

11. A poem that you have written

in any form

12. Free choice
13. “ “
14. “ “
15. “ “

You must include:

1. A title page with MLA information (See Compass page 54.)
2. A dedication and epigraph page
3. An introduction (300-500 words introducing the theme, briefly explaining the relationship between the poems and the theme, and reflecting upon the theme.)
4. A table of contents with titles and authors
5. A minimum of fifteen (15) separate poems/songs.
6. A Works Cited page, including discography (MLA format See Compass page 56-58)

You may include:

1. More of your own poems
2. Illustrations and/or photograph (Art taken from other sources much be cited)
3. More than one song lyric
4. A mixed-CD/mixed-tape with the song(s) and poems

Approaches to Poetry

"Prepare" one of the remaining poems for tomorrow's class discussion.
D-Block: "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph," "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," "Musee des Beaux Arts," or "O Daedalus, Fly Away Home"
F-Block: "To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph," "Musee des Beaux Arts," or "O Daedalus, Fly Away Home"

By "prepare" I mean take read, reread, and takes notes on the poem, using one or more of the mnemonic devices (say-play-imply, SOAPSTone + Theme, and/or TP CAST + Theme).

1. Say, play, suggest; or, say, play, imply …

What does the poem say literally?

How does the poem play with language and conventions? (How does it use or shape language in a particular way? Think of sounds and rhythm. Think of syntax—the shape of sentence—and diction—the level of the language: formal, conversational, slangy, etc. Think of line breaks and stanza breaks.)

What does the poem suggest or imply? Think of suggestive images. Think of the mood. Think of figurative language (metaphors, similes, metonymies, personifications, etc.) Think of the connotations of the particular word choices. Think of the tone of the speaker.

2. TP CAST + Theme

Title: Read and think about the possible meaning of the title of the poem.

Paraphrase: "Translate" the literal meaning of the poem into your own words. (Denotative level)

Connotation: Analyze the figurative, associative, implied, and suggestive meaning of the poem (Connotative level)

Attitude: Analyze the tone of the poem. What is the speaker's attitude/tone? What is the poet's attitude/tone?

Shifts: Note shifts in the poem: Shifts in setting (time and place), in language (diction and syntax), in structure (length of lines, rhythm, rhyme scheme, etc.), in tone, in meaning. Shifts in meaning are often indicated by transitional words (but, yet, etc.), by juxtaposition, by changes in form/structure.

Title: Take a second (or third and fourth) look at the title. Think about the title in relation to the literal/denotative level, the connotative/implied level, and the poem as a whole.

Theme: What does the poem suggest or imply about human nature(s), human society (-ies), human struggles, etc.?

3. SOAPSTone + Theme

Speaker: Who is speaking the poem? What do you know? What can you infer?

Occasion: What is the occasion for the poem? The time and the place? What do you know? What can you infer?

Audience: Who is the audience for the poem? What do you know? What can you infer?

Purpose: What is the speaker's purpose? What is the poet's purpose? What do you know? What can you infer?

Subject: What is the subject of the poem? What is it about? Literally? Figuratively? What do you know on the surface? What can you infer?

Tone: What is the tone or attitude of the speaker? of the poet? What are the clues?

Theme: What does the poem suggest or imply about human nature(s), human society (-ies), human struggles, etc.?

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

Click on the image to see the whole...
Pieter Brueghel De Val van Icarus (painted around 1558)
Here's a link to an interesting commentary on the painting that expands our discussion yesterday.