Marsden Hartley, Number 5, 1914-15

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English 377: Modern Poetry, Painting, and Music

Prof. Joseph Conte

Fall 1999
  • Aug. 30: Introduction.
  • Sep. 1: An Interdisciplinary View of Modernism.
  • Sep. 3: The Salon: Writers and Artists Together. Paris, New York, London.
  • Sep. 6: Labor Day
  • Sep. 8: Ezra Pound and Imagism. "The Rest," "In a Station of the Metro," "Alba" (36), "Pagani's," "The Beautiful Toilet," "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter," "The Jewel Stairs' Grievance."
  • Sep. 10: Pound. "Hugh Selwyn Mauberley." Intaglio method.
  • Sep. 13: Pound and Vorticism."The Game of Chess." Wyndham Lewis. Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.
  • Sep. 15: Pound. Cantos I-IV, IX, XIII, XVII, XLV.
  • Sep. 17: Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. Cubism. "Three Portraits of Painters."
  • Sep. 20: Yom Kippur
  • Sep. 22: Stein. "Tender Buttons." Cubist Poetry.
  • Sep. 24: Stein and Virgil Thomson. Opera. "Four Saints in Three Acts."
  • Sep. 27: Stein and Thomson. Lyric. "Preciosilla."
  • Sep. 29: T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
  • Oct. 1: Eliot, "The Waste Land." Tonality. Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring.
  • Oct. 4: Eliot, "The Waste Land." Fragmentation.
    First Essay due in class, 5-7 pages
  • Oct. 6: William Carlos Williams and the "Others" group. Marcel Duchamp and the found object. "Danse Russe," "Queen Anne's Lace," "Spring and All," "The Rose," "The Red Wheelbarrow." George Antheil, Ballet méchanique. "Overture to a Dance of Locomotives."
  • Oct. 8: Williams and Precisionism. Charles Demuth. Charles Sheeler. "The Great Figure," "Portrait of a Lady," "The Botticellian Trees," "Nantucket," "Proletarian Portrait," "The Yachts," "The Crimson Cyclamen," "Classic Scene," "Perpetuum Mobile: The City," "Between Walls."
  • Oct. 11: Williams and Pieter Brueghel, the Elder. "The Dance." "Pictures from Brueghel."
  • Oct. 13: Williams and Steve Reich. "The Desert Music."
  • Oct. 15: Wallace Stevens. Cubism and Surrealism. Giorgio de Chirico. Max Ernst. "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "The Emperor of Ice Cream."
  • Oct. 18: Stevens. Excerpt from "The Man with the Blue Guitar." Picasso. David Hockney.
  • Oct. 20: Stevens. Excerpt from "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." Abstraction. Constructivism. Joseph Cornell.
  • Oct. 22: Hart Crane. The Bridge: "To Brooklyn Bridge," "Ave Maria," and "Powhatan's Daughter." The Jazz Symphony. George Gershwin, "Rhapsody in Blue."
  • Oct. 25: Crane. The Bridge: "Cutty Sark," "Cape Hatteras," and "Three Songs." Vaudeville and burlesque.
  • Oct. 27: Crane. The Bridge: "Quaker Hill," "The Tunnel," and "Atlantis." Joseph Stella, Brooklyn Bridge.
  • Oct. 29: Langston Hughes. The Weary Blues: "Danse Africaine," "Spirituals," "Tambourines," and Shadow of the Blues.
  • Nov. 1: Hughes, "Song for Billie Holliday," "Midnight Raffle," "Miss Blues'es Child," "Trumpet Player," and Life is Fine.
    Second Essay Due in Class, 5-7 pages
  • Nov. 3: Hughes, Lament over Love, "Blue Bayou," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Madam's Calling Cards," and Montage of a Dream Deferred.
  • Nov. 5: Robert Creeley, "The Revelation," "An Obscene Poem," "Chasing the Bird," poems from For Love. Collaborations with René Laubiès, Fielding Dawson, and Dan Rice. Black Mountain College.
  • Nov. 8: Creeley. "Words," "A Sight," "A Piece," "Numbers." Collaborations with R. B. Kitaj, Robert Indiana, and Marisol. Presences.
  • Nov. 10: Creeley. "People," poems from Thirty Things. Collaborations with Arthur Okamura, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, and Jim Dine.
  • Nov. 12: Creeley. "Mother's Voice," poems from Windows, poems from It. Collaborations with Tom Clark, Duane Michals, James Surls, and Francesco Clemente.
  • Nov. 15: Allen Ginsberg. The Beats and jazz. Greenwich Village in the 1950s. "To Aunt Rose" and "The Lion for Real."
    Abstract and preliminary bibliography for Research Paper Due in Class
  • Nov. 17: Ginsberg. "Cleveland, the Flats," "Stanzas: Written at Night in Radio City," and "Hum Bom!"
  • Nov. 19: Sylvia Plath. "The Disquieting Muses," "On the Decline of Oracles." Giorgio de Chirico. "Snakecharmer," "Yadwigha, on a Red Couch, Among Lilies." Henri Rousseau.
  • Nov. 22: Plath. "Virgin in a Tree," "Perseus," and "Battle­Scene." Paul Klee.
  • Nov. 24: Thanksgiving Recess
  • Nov. 26: Thanksgiving Recess
  • Nov. 29: John Ashbery. "The Instruction Manual" and "The Painter." Abstract Expressionism.
    Draft Research Paper Due in Class
  • Dec. 1: Ashbery. "The Double Dream of Spring" and "Pyrography."
  • Dec. 3: Frank O'Hara. "A Sonnet for Jane Freilicher," "Chez Jane," and "On Seeing Larry Rivers' Washington." The New York School.
  • Dec. 6: O'Hara. "A Step Away from Them" and "Why I Am Not a Painter." Jackson Pollock. Action Painting.
  • Dec. 8: Contemporary Music and the Lyric: Tom Waits and others.
  • Dec. 10: Conclusions.
    Final Research Paper Due in Class, 10-12 pages

    Required Texts:

Crane, Hart. The Bridge. New York: Liveright, 1970.
Creeley, Robert. Selected Poems. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Eliot, T. S. The Waste Land and Other Poems. Ed. Frank Kermode. New York: Penguin, 1998.
Pound, Ezra. Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1957.
Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Stein, Gertrude. Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein. New York: Vintage, 1990.
Williams, William Carlos. Selected Poems. New York: New Directions, 1969.

All texts for the course can be found at Talking Leaves Bookstore, 3158 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14214; (716) 837-8554. Additional materials and poetry not included in the print volumes will be available on the course website. Students will be responsible for reading, downloading, and/or printing additional materials in compliance with Access 99.

Course Requirements:

Attendance in class and participation in online discussion group for English 377 is mandatory; in-class critiques of text and image; two 5-7 page papers, and a research paper of 10-12 pages.

Papers: Neatly printed copies must be presented in class on the day indicated on the syllabus. These copies should adhere to the following format: a cover page with a title for your essay, your name, the course number and title, the date; typed, double-spaced with one-inch margins; all pages numbered; stapled. The paper should be proofread for grammatical and typographical errors.

Late policy: Late assignments will be accepted only by prior arrangement with me. Failure to seek approval before the due date will result in a penalty of one grade increment per class meeting.

Plagiarism: All secondary materials, either from print or online sources, must be properly attributed. Plagiarism of a paper-either in whole or in part, especially including work downloaded from the Internet-will result in an immediate failure for the assignment and possible failure for the course, at the instructor's discretion.

Attendance: Noted on a daily basis. Absence from more than five classes during the course of the semester will result in a final grade deduction, up to and including failure for the course, at the instructor's discretion.

Grading: 50% for the two papers; 40% for the final research paper; and 10% for attendance and participation in the class discussion list.


Last Revised on Saturday, August 21, 1999