A bit about forms and what they're metaphors for, and then mainly Stevens's "Emperor of Ice Cream," with other Stevens ("The Snow Man," "Auroras of Autumn") mentioned briefly.
Discussion of Ruskin's pathetic fallacy; the metaphor of the villanelle in Rowan Ricardo Phillips; some villanelles, by AE Stallings, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop; Stevens's "Emperor of Ice Cream."
A quiz (not recorded) based on the set of poems the students could write about, and some discussion of the answers. Then the conclusion of Shelley's "Mont Blanc," with some discussion of the pathetic fallacy, to be continued.
Some reminders about metaphor, and then more about the contest between mind and mountain in P.B. Shelley's "Mont Blanc." So far the mountain is like the Astros, leading the mind 3 games to 2, more or less. (This comparison is not going to have staying power, but there you go.)
Assignments for a paper on metaphor. Salty discussion of metaphors, of plagiarism, of past and future assassinations. Then (most of the class) a beginning of a discussion of Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc" and the contest to see what is metaphor and what is reality.
Metaphor: Ezra Pound (and Wordsworth). Some more consideration of sonnets and their relation to metaphor and simile: Alice Oswald, Elizabeth Bishop. Waley's translation of Tao Yuan-Ming and its similarity to Shakespeare's sonnet 73.
Sonnets and metaphor: Wyatt and Surrey's translations of Petrarch, and then Some Shakespeare (with remarks about Starbuck)
Some more on Pope and how the sound seems to be an echo to the sense; another line of Milton's -- "Awake, arise, or be forever fallen" -- and how it divides; Wyatt's "They Fle From Me."
More on iambic pentameter. Examples from Milton and Pope. A bit on sonnets. Why poetry tends to flirt with prime numbers -- five feet per line, seven pairs of rhymes in sonnets, etc. Examples from Shakespeare.
More on the theology of Paradise Lost ; I keep wanting to get back to the formal surface but we talked a lot about content and context. Also: The thirteen men effect!
Not what I meant to be doing to day, but it turned out we talked about the opening of Paradise Lost , and certain theological issues about free will, temptation, judgment of God, and justification of his ways.
Different sorts of stresses and their superposition. A lot on one line in Paradise Lost : "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime...?" And a bit on one line in Yeats: "Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose." And then the opening line of Paradise Lost : the stress in the word "first," the countervailing stress on the word "disobedience."
What every poem is about: its own form. Garden path sentences (e.g. "The old man the boat.") as showing how form is almost always announced. Speaker vs. poet. Dialogue that turns into one speaker taking charge. Wordsworth's "We Are Seven."
Ashbery's "Wrong Kind of Insurance" -- and how to read Ashbery. Dactylic ending of that poem (or, yes, anapestic; it can be a matter of choice how you time it): "Each night / Is trifoliate, strange to the touch." Then two Cummings poems . Hearing vs. seeing. Reading vs. seeing (how the intelligence agencies dope out people who claim they don't understand a language). (NOTE TO JEFF: I learned this from Goffman's Strategic Interaction. Text me as soon as you see this.) Brooks' "We Real Cool," and ...
What is the most important criterion for a text's having a claim to being a poem? What if it's not a text? what if it's oral poetry, like Homer? What authorizes us to say that there are five feet in a pentameter line , or six in a hexameter, when Milton and Homer recite their verses orally, or Shakespearean actors utter blank verse soliloquies on stage? Are lines (unrhymed lines, anyhow) just artifacts of printing? Hint: no. Are they ever artifacts of printing? Hint: yes....
Tennyson's " The Skipping Rope." Dialogue: dramatic conflict and rhyme. Ballad meter and alternation. A note on Lyrical Ballads .
Cole Porter's "You're the Top." Eighteenth Century bouts-rimés. The poetic task of making arbitrary rhymes make sense. Jakobson on the poetic function of language.
How trochaic words overlap iambic feet. Loose onsets, strict endings. "Brought death inTO the world"? Or "Brought death INto the world"? Or both? "After great pain a formal feeling comes."
We talk about Merrill's "b o d y" and its relation to Macbeth and then the words et cetera = etc. et cetera, especially in Alice Notely's wonderful four line poem "The Comfort," with some attention to enjambment and end stop.
This is actually the second class, since we had an introductory class last week. This is a course in the close reading of poetry. Today's class largely on James Merrill's poem b o d y, on the limits of close reading (if any), and on "Roses are red..." Syllabus outline, to be updated periodically: Topics This syllabus is done by topics. In order to remain flexible I will update weekly with specific readings. Right now the syllabus is aspirational, and will give you a general sense of the order of...
The last class this semester. Cleopatra and her dreams of Antony. Her death. Ass unpolicied vs. lass unparalleled.
We continue going through the play, to Antony's loss of himself ("the heart of loss"), his botched suicide, and his reunion with Cleopatra.
Beginning of Act IV. More on Antony vs. "an Antony." The latter is an object in the world, has worldly being. The former is the extravagant, isolated subjectivity which is the tragic waywardness which is more and more where he is: in "the heart of loss." If extravagance -- waywardness, wandering outside of any world which is one's own, Binswanger's Verstiegenheit -- weren't more intense than worldliness, if things didn't get more intense as one loses everything, tragedy would be of no aesthetic ...
We conclude Act III, and discuss how well people know Antony, and how well Antony can know Cleopatra. His anger at her, and his recovery from that anger. Enobarbus' loyalty, and then his planned defection. Enobarbus compared with Horatio, Kent, and Banquo.
Antony's insistence on fighting by sea: his loss, and anger at Cleopatra "I am so lated in the world that I..." ("Have lost my way forever.") "Fall not a tear, I say." This is where the play starts getting to be Shakespeare's greatest play.
We continue close reading of Act III, but then the last half hour, in response to a series of questions, is about how to interpret drama: what freedom and what constraints are there on how actors interpret? How should we interpret? Taking Dworkin's dictum that we should interpret in a way that makes the work the best possible work it can be, how does that apply to Shakespeare? What is the meaning of canonicity? Something like: a work that is open to lots of possibility for great interpretation. ...
I am team-teaching a class on Wittgenstein this term. The person I team-teach with, a philosopher, is too careful about how to put things to want the class podcast. The class largely consists of us disagreeing. He thinks (like lots of Anglo-American philosophers) that Wittgenstein was sloppy and couldn't make his case in a systematic and well-organized way. I defend Wittgenstein, and I usually do it in the spineless liberal way that I was brought up in: "Even accepting everything you say..." aft...
We continue reading through the play: Pompey disappoints Menas; Ventidius comments on who gets credit; Menas, Agrippa, Ventidius, and Enobarbus are represented as belonging to the same type (so that Menas's turn away from Pompey will adumbrate a very intense later scene); the love between Octavian and Octavia; her contrast with Cleopatra; Cleopatra's news management; Charmian's encouragement. Alexandrian vs. Roman Feasts. We're now well into Act III.
We continue with Act II. The treaty between Pompey and the Triumvirate. Cleopatra and the messenger who reports Antony's marriage. I should have said that her relation to the messenger is a version of the third person imperative force of the play: she demands what can't be demanded, that the truth be different from what it is.
News for Pompey. Characterization of Antony in his absence, again. Delicate negotiations. Octavia. Enorbarbus predicts what Antony will do: his amazing description of Cleopatra. Antony confirms that he'll go back to Alexandria.
