English 386-01, Poetry/Dr. Clifton Snider
Spring 2008/Office: MHB-506; phone: (562) 985-4247
MW. 3:30-4:45 p.m./e-mail: csnider@csulb.edu
Room: LA5-248/Hours: MW 4:55-5:40 p.m.

web site: www.csulb.edu/~csnider (has important course material and links)

Introduction

This course is an introduction to poetry, poetry as a genre, how it works, its themes, and various approaches to analyzing it.

Course Goals

• To be introduced to a wide variety of poets and poems.
  

• To learn to analyze poems as individuals, as a class, and in a group in order to discover their various meanings.
  
  
• To learn and analyze the techniques a poet uses to develop meaning in poems.
  
  
• To be able to analyze poems carefully and insightfully in two research papers.
  

• Analytical Research Papers are 4-6 pages long, typed, double-spaced, written in MLA style and worth up to a 100 points each. Your thesis-driven paper will require at least two secondary sources (do not use Wikipedia or any other unauthorized Internet source or reference work; databases such as the MLA Bibliography are fine to find sources; if in doubt, see me). You may use our text, but it does not count as one of the 2 secondary sources. Your interpretation should be an explication or an analysis (see Arp and Johnson, 305-306) of a poem or poems by W. H. Auden, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, or Robert Frost. You should follow one of the four varieties of papers outlined in Arp and Johnson (307-310); you may use a current form of literary criticism, such as I do in my essays on Dickinson (Jungian/Archetypal/Queer Studies) and Bishop (New Criticism or Formalism). See also my chapter on Auden in my book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: A Jungian Interpretation of Literature. Along with a true rough draft (not a printout or copy of your final paper), you must include in your folder copies of each page you use from secondary sources. Each source must have written on it sufficient bibliographical information (author, title, publication, year). I will not accept the paper without a rough draft. Put all of this in either a regular-size file folder or a folder with pockets. NO BINDERS. Failure on any of these requirements will cost 5 points per failure. A more complete description of the assignment is on each of the assignment pages on my web site. Read Part Two, "Writing about Poetry," in Arp and Johnson.
  

• Poem Critiques. Each week, as indicated on the schedule below under Groups, you will write and hand in a 1-2 page (maximum) critique of a poem (typed, of course) from that week's reading, both Monday and Wednesday, then break into groups to discuss your critiques, worth 10 points each. You will need to be in the same group every week. The group will select one person to present his or her critique to the entire class, for another 10 points, until all have done this. Do not worry too much about being "wrong" in your interpretation as long as you support what you say from the poem and make a sincere effort to provide a relatively complete and reasonable interpretation.
  

• Some of our works deal with controversial subjects. Depiction of an offensive subject, I’m sure you must know, does not necessarily imply endorsement of it. You may read or hear language you find offensive (this may include the videos). If any of this bothers you, probably you should not be in this class.
  
  
• Absolutely no cell phones, iPhones, BlackBerries, laptop computers or any other electronic devices are allowed during class time, except for those needed for a disability. Please respect your classmates and me by paying attention to what we are doing in class without interrupting us. Do not work on other material during class.
  
  
• Plagiarism has increasingly become a serious problem. You will fail the course if I discover you have plagiarized, whether intentionally or not. Remember that using anyone else's words without quotation marks, even if you give credit to your source, is plagiarism. See the Schedule of Classes. And read the chapter on plagiarism in the MLA Handbook.
  
  
• See also the Resolving Differences Handbook on the CSULB web site. If you have any complaints, you must follow university policy or risk the lowering of your final grade.