LT952-7-SP-CO:
United States Avant-Garde Poetry since 1950
PLEASE NOTE: This module is inactive. Visit the Module Directory to view modules and variants offered during the current academic year.
2023/24
Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
Colchester Campus
Spring
Postgraduate: Level 7
Inactive
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
20
02 March 2021
Requisites for this module
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This survey module explores genealogies and differences in experimental poetry from the U.S.A, across the late 20th and early 21st century. As well as scanning the nation from East to West, this module pays attention to the 20th century as a period of Little Magazines and ambitious anthologies, considering the way that publishing and circulation practices have created `schools` of poetry.
The overall function of the module is to expose students to poetry that is off the beaten track, and may not have been taught at undergraduate level. Within the major schools of avant-garde poetry, emphasis is placed on the more marginal and experimental voices: women, writers of colour and queer writers are reintroduced to what are already alternative canons here, in order to question the way that we categorise poetry.
1. To create a timeline of the modern period in U.S. poetry, so that students understand who came when, and what their relationship was to the writers who came before and after them.
2. To consider how poetry and poetic language develop within regional coteries.
3. To expand students` familiarity with poetry, so that the very funny or the very weird is considered alongside the very serious and the very famous.
4. To encourage students to engage with contemporary poetry, and to explore the role of poetic language as a social and political tool.
Upon successful completion of this module, students will:
1. have developed an awareness of different reading practices, and different conceptions of the function of `the poem`.
2. have become more astute, questioning readers, with a heightened awareness of the function of language.
3. have a good, chronological knowledge of how poetry – and publishing – developed in the USA in the twentieth century.
4. have developed the ability to write clearly about difficult ideas and modes of thought.
General Reading:
Charles Olson, `Projective Verse`
Zoe Leonard, `I Want a Dyke for President`
Frank O'Hara – Selected Poems (ed. Don Allen, 2005)
John Ashbery – Selected Poems (1998)
Ashbery, O'Hara et al – The New York Poets: An Anthology, 2004
V.R. Lang – Poems and Plays (1975)
Allen Ginsberg – Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems (2009)
Anne Waldman – Fast Speaking Woman (1986)
Diane Di Prima - Pieces of a Song (1990)
Amiri Baraka – S.O.S (2016)
Jack Spicer – My Vocabulary Did This To Me (2010)
Robert Duncan – The Collected Early Poems and Plays (2012)
Charles Olson – Selected Poems (1997)
Robert Creeley – Selected Poems 1945-2005 (2008)
Edward Dorn – Hands Up! (1964)
Charles Bernstein – All the Whiskey in Heaven (2010)
17. Rae Armantrout – Partly (2016)
18. Leslie Scalapino – It's Go in Horizontal (2008)
19. Miguel lgarin (ed.) – Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café (1994)
20. Eileen Myles – Snowflake/ Different Streets (2014)
21. Alice Notley – Grave of Light (2008)
22. Bernadette Mayer – Work and Days (2016)
Anticipated teaching delivery for 2021-22:
This module will be delivered by weekly synchronous seminar, face-to-face where possible and accessible via Zoom, with online portfolio submissions required weekly.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
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Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Jordan Savage, email: jksava@essex.ac.uk.
Dr Jordan Savage
LiFTS General Office - email liftstt@essex.ac.uk.
Telephone 01206 872626
Yes
No
No
No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
Of 706 hours, 0 (0%) hours available to students:
706 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s).
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