SPRING 2008 MPW 980 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING CLASS # Thursday 4:00 6:40 Mondays, WPH Units

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1 SPRING 2008 MPW 980 ADVANCED POETRY WRITING CLASS # Thursday 4:00 6:40 Mondays, WPH Units PROFESSOR: GERALD LOCKLIN PHONE/VOICE MAIL: (562) E MAIL: glocklin@usc.edu; glocklin@csulb.edu Phone/Voice Mail is preferred. OFFICE HOUR: At least one half hour before class and as needed after class, in the classroom, or THH 355H, or outside, depending upon room availability. PREREQUISITE: Admission to the MPW Program. COURSE DESCRIPTION, GOALS, OUTCOMES: Lecture discussion, criticism, and detailed evaluation of works in progress for the purpose of improvement of those works in particular and the overall improvement of the creative and critical skills of the student. Critiques, spoken or written, should be articulate, specific, tactful, helpful, and offered in a spirit of civility and collegiality. WITHDRAWAL POLICY: The instructor will grant any request for withdrawal from the course that is allowed by university regulations. Please consult the University Catalogue and the Schedule of Classes for applicable policies and deadlines. It is the student s responsibility to withdraw from a class that he or she is not attending. GRADING: The instructor abides by university standards for grading in graduate courses, reserving, for instance, the grade of A for outstanding performance in the class. The instructor does not, however, have any predetermined curve or quota for the distribution of grades. The grade will be based on the instructor s evaluation of the quality of the written creative work and the quality of the individual s participation in the workshop process. The former is the most important; the latter is most apt to come into play when the written work is on the cusp between grade levels. Closely approximate percentages would be 80 90% written work and 20 10% class participation, varying with mitigating factors such as documented illness. It is, thus, essential that students be in regular attendance, punctual, neither distracting nor disruptive, and willing to participate generously in workshop discussions. It is equally important that all work be handed in on the date due, in class, and, at the very least, by the final class of the semester, in order that the student s final grade not be jeopardized. At the midpoint of the semester the

2 instructor will give an indication of progress in the course to those students who request one. The nature of creative writing, and of poetry writing especially, lends itself to this holistic approach. Ultimately, it is the instructor s professional evaluation of the quality of the written work and class participation that will determine the student s grade. (See also Assignments and Remarks. ) ACCOMMODATION OF DISABILITIES: Any student requesting accommodations based on a disability is required to register with Disability Services and Programs (DSP) each semester. A letter of verification for approved accommodations can be obtained from DSP. Please be sure the letter is delivered to the instructor as early in the semester as possible. DSP is located in STU 301 and is open 8:30 a.m. 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The phone number for DSP is (213) ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: USC seeks to maintain an optimal learning environment. General principles of academic honesty include the concept of respect for the intellectual property of others, the expectation that original work will be submitted unless otherwise allowed by the instructor, and the obligations both to protect one s own academic work from misuse by others as well as to avoid using another s work as one s own. All students are expected to understand and abide by these principles. SCAMPUS, the STUDENT GUIDEBOOK, contains the Student Conduct Code in Section 11.00, while the recommended sanctions are located in Appendix A: Students will be referred to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards for further review, should there be any suspicion of academic dishonesty. The Review process can be found at: affairs/sjacs/ REQUIRED TEXTS: Charles Webb, editor: Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, University of Iowa Press, 2002, ISBN Mark Strand and Eavan Boland: Making a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms, 2000, First Edition, ISBN Highly recommended are Poet s Market, 2008 edition, and any edition of Elements of Style by Strunk and White The following books may also prove useful: Gioia: Twentieth Century American Poetics Haslam: Many Californias Gioia: California Poetry Roetzheim: The Giant Book of Poetry

3 Students may previously have purchased for other classes books that would prove useful, such as The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Norton Book of Modern Poetry, Norton Anthologies of British or American Literature, Oxford Book of American Poetry, or similar anthologies by other publishers. Among the personal favorites of the instructor from his own generation or the previous one or among younger poets are Edward Field, Charles Bukowski, Charles Harper Webb (an MPW graduate), Ed Ochester, Billy Collins, Ron Koertge, Sylvia Plath, Ann Sexton, Judith Vollmer, Lisa Glatt, Denise Duhamel, David Hernandez, John Yamrus, Richard Vargas, David Caddy, Patricia Cherin, Donna Hilbert, Frank O Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, and Theodore Roethke, but this list unfairly leaves out many others since virtually all the English language poets from Old English to the Modernists back through the centuries, and many, in translation, from other languages, including Baudelaire, Rilke, Lorca, Neruda, Pessoa, Li Po, Basho, Prevert, and Catullus, have provided lines that rattle around in his brain. The students no doubt already have personal favorites to share and many to discover. Students should be aware of schools, movements, or groupings of poets such as Symbolists, The Common Language Tradition, Imagists, Fugitive Poets, Populists, War Poets, Poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Objectivists, Philosophical Poets, Confessional Poets, Archetypalists, Beats, The New York School, Black Mountain Poets, Projective Verse, Neo classicists, Formalists, Deep Image Poets, L A N G U A G E Poets, and the Underground or Avant Garde Poets of the Little Magazines and Small Presses. They are no doubt already aware of varieties of Performance Poetry and of the incorporation into poetry in English of the experiences and expressions of America s diverse racial and ethnic heritages. While the primary focus is upon the writing of the poem and peer contributions thereunto, these will be enhanced by reading assignments from the required texts, practice in the oral presentation of poems in class, and encouragement to participate in public readings of work and to submit work for publication in print and online. Realistically, however, time is finite. ASSIGNMENTS: Students will hand in about a poem a week (or two every two weeks) of their poems during the course of the semester (the number varying with length, type, style) and will at the last class submit to the instructor a portfolio of eight revised poems that they feel represent their work at its best. Students may expect that at least four of the poems will be in iambic pentameter forms such as blank verse, the villanelle, the Petrarchan/Italianate or Elizabethan/Shakespearian sonnet, and the sestina. Students will present to the instructor at the start of class enough typed copies of their poem(s) to allow distribution by him to each student in the seminar while retaining one for himself. More than one poem may appear on a page and both sides of a page may be used. The student s name should appear on each page. Students will read their poems to the class before discussion commences. The instructor s comments will be oral, but students are

4 encouraged to provide appropriate written as well as oral comments, honestly but tactfully expressed, upon their classmates efforts. The most helpful criticisms are those that are most specific, especially those that suggest the actual revisions to be made. SEMINAR MEETINGS University Holidays: January 21, Martin Luther King Day, and February 18, Presidents Day. Spring Recess: March Thesis Submission for Graduating Students: April 1. January 14: Introductions. Discussion of Syllabus. Lecture discussions of traditional versification, free verse, experimentation, the creative process, where one finds poems, levels of discourse, common faults in writing, and other preliminary or basic topics. Assignments of poems to be read and poems to be written and submitted. January 28, February 4, February 11, February 25, March 3, March 10, March 24, March 31, April 7, April 14, April 21: Students will hand in one or more new poems each class for constructive workshop discussion. Lecture discussions of a wide range of literary topics technical, thematic, theoretical, and practical will emerge from the consideration of the poems. The instructor has been studying, writing and publishing poetry for over forty years and will hope to convey to the students as much as possible of what he has learned from his studies and from that experiential immersion, including the agonies and ecstasies of the marketing process. He has also learned over time, however, that students tend to absorb the most from their classmates not just from the spoken or written critiques but from the modeling of new possibilities that they discern in what their peers have created. We are often not even conscious of how much we are learning from each other. The instructor will hope to contribute to close readings of the student efforts, as well as indulging his penchant for taking off on tangents (from which he increasingly does not make it back to where he started), but he also knows that a great deal of invaluable verbal interplay can occur among the students themselves, with the instructor as moderator. He is also aware of the great variety of backgrounds, talents, and needs in workshops today and will do his best to individualize the instruction to fit the particular strengths and goals of the students. That said, the level of achievement remains the responsibility of the student, just as the unpleasant task of grading remains that of the instructor. April 28: Final class of the semester: Portfolio of eight best poems due at start of class. Student evaluations of instructor will be conducted according to university procedures. Summing up. May 16: Commencement.

5 REMARKS: The instructor reserves the right to exercise that reasonable flexibility regarding assignments and assessments that he has found useful to the educational experience. He also assumes a degree of sophistication in regards to the openness of subjects, techniques, and language in contemporary writing, though this is not to be construed as an encouragement to test the bounds of libel or obscenity. Occasional absences or tardiness may be excused at the discretion of the instructor, as may late assignments. Necessary changes to assignments or to anything in this syllabus will be announced in class. It is the responsibility of the student to be in class and attentive in order to be aware of any such changes or, if absent or inattentive, to obtain such information from classmates. The instructor s methods are more Socratic than technological. He has also been known to break into song and/or dance. He believes that creativity flourishes in an environment in which discipline (preferably self discipline), relaxation, confidence, positive reinforcement, honest criticism, and joy co exist. He feels extremely fortunate to have been blessed with a life as a teacher and writer, which is why he continues to teach.