I’m working with Joan Larkin this semester, and am so excited to be doing so. I have to write a long critical essay, in my case looking at 2 or 3 sonnet sequences. I’ll be studying scansion and meter (which I will learn, yes I will!) and reading Dickinson and May Swenson.

Spring 2010 Study Plan

Packet One

Reading to narrow down which poems to explore in critical essay paper on poems within a sequence:

“21 Love Poems” Adrienne Rich
Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons Marilyn Hacker
The Sonnets, Ted Berrigan
She Heads into the Wilderness Macari
Eye of the Blackbird McFadden
American Sonnets Stern
Blackbird and Wolf Cole
Holy Sonnets Donne

Begin scansion study using Ciardi How Does A Poem Mean, Stravinsky “The Phenomenon of Music”, Langston Hughes The Book of Rhythms

Packet Two

Read: Dickinson, especially the 1862 poems, Rich “Vesuvius at Home,” and selections from either/or:
White Heat by Brenda Wineapple
Emily Dickinson: My Wars are Laid Away in Books by Alfred Habegger
Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson’s Life by Aife Murray

For Critical Essay: readings from Penguin Book of the Sonnet, essays on the sonnet from Finch Exaltation of Form or other craft essays to be determined

Packet Three

Read: May Swenson, from New & Selected Things Taking Place and The Complete Love Poems.
Sue Russell “A Mysterious and Lavish Power” from The Kenyon Review
Alicia Ostriker essay from Body My House

Packet Four

Read: selected sequences from packet one not used in the critical essay, titles to be determined