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PoetryENGL 340 |Section A |Eisenhower Hall 228 |MWF 11:30 | Fall 2005Gregory Eiselein | Email: [email protected] | Phone: 532-0386 | Office: ECS 108COffice Hours: M & F 10:30-11:20, Thu 9:00-10:20, plus many more by appointmentClass Website: http://www.ksu.edu/english/eiselei/engl340/Have you practis'd so long to learn to read?Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of thedead, nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. —Walt WhitmanCourse DescriptionEnglish 340 is an introduction to the reading and critical examination of poetry. Theprimary purpose of the course is to familiarize you with various ways to read, evaluate,analyze, and take pleasure in poetry. Along theway, you will have the opportunity to read somegreat poets; to study a few poetic traditions; totalk about ideas and experiences that tend toelude ordinary modes of expression; and to learnhow to study language in a careful, patient,devoted manner.While exploring poetic language, forms, andtechniques, the class will consider some ratherfundamental questions about poetry: How dopoets use sounds, forms, and appeals to thesenses to make meanings? What's therelationship of a poem to personal identity? Whatgood is poetry, anyway? Why do people bother toread poems? Why do readers love and hatepoetry? Why do poets write poems? What doespoetry do that we should take notice? I imaginethat the answers to these questions are diverseand complex, and I hope that within our classdiscussions these questions will generate a livelyconversation and raise further questions aboutwhat poetry is and what it does.Walt Whitman2Course GoalsThe over-arching goal of Poetry is to prepare you to become thoughtful lifelong readers ofpoems. Although you will learn lessons useful in other courses and future employments,this course itself is not, strictly speaking, background information needed to studysomething else or training in a job skill. Although it provides excellent preparation forupper-level English courses in poetry, this course is not a prerequisite for those courses. Inshort, I think of his course as preparation for the rest of your life; the focus of this course isyou, not some other course, teacher, job, or boss.To become excellent lifelong readers of poetry, you will need to learn and develop fourparticular abilities:o Explication: the ability to read a poem, make sense of it, and explain yourunderstanding of it to others.o Close Reading: the ability to use knowledge of a poem's formal structures and itssounds to enhance your understanding of its meaning, purpose, and effects.o Appreciation: the ability to explain a poem's significance and value.o Critical Thinking: the ability to think about and use what you've learned about apoem in order to think about or do something else; the ability to connect a poem tothis something else; the ability to conceptualize, apply, analyze, synthesize, and/orevaluate what you've learned about a poetic text as a guide to action or belief.We're going to read poems; figure out various ways to explain and interpret what's going onin them; analyze their formal and musical elements as a way to talk about individualpoems as a whole; learn ways of explaining to others the importance we find in them; andconnect them to other aspects of our living and thinking.In teaching these four skills, this course builds on the thinking and writing skills taught inExpository Writing: focus, organization, development, editing, and tone. If your writingskills are shaky and you've never taken Expository Writing or some other collegecomposition course, you may want to take ENGL 100 along with or before ENGL 340. If youthink you might need to transfer out of this course into a section of ENGL 100, please letme know.Course Work & Course PoliciesReading. The key to doing well in a poetry class is reading and re-reading the poemscarefully. Read them to understand them, and read them to figure out what's interesting orunusual about each one. Read the assignments attentively before coming to class and lookup words that are unfamiliar to you. A poem is not always accessible after only one try; sodon’t give up.3Papers and exams. The writing in our course will consist of two formalpapers and many short writing assignments (almost one for every classperiod for the first part of the semester). Many of these shorterassignments will be homework exercises or in-class exercises. I will alsoask you to prepare a class presentation and to attend at least one poetryreading. There will be two exams, a midterm and a final. When the timecomes, I will distribute information explaining these assignments in detail.Late papers. I don’t generally like to accept late papers; but in certain, limitedcircumstances I will accept papers after the due date. Assignments will lose a grade forevery class period that they are late. I like to collect papers at the beginning of class on thedue date.Attendance. In addition to careful reading of the poems, I expect good attendance andactive participation in class exercises and discussions. ENGL 340 emphasizes activelearning, student involvement, and student experiences. You will be at the center of theteaching and learning that happens during our class conversations and activities, and yourattendance is absolutely essential to the learning that happens here.Thus, I take roll religiously. I believe in class attendance. Irregular attendance will hurtyour grade and may cause you to fail. I do understand that every once in a whilecircumstances may make it impossible for you to attend. If you miss one or two classesduring the semester, don't worry about it. If you miss more than that, your attendance mayhurt your grade. Students who miss seven or more class sessions will receive zero points forattendance and participation (15% of your grade). Students who miss ten classesautomatically fail the course. On the positive side, I reward good attendance and activeclass participation. Those who miss no sessions will receive five extra-credit points.Grades. In determining final grades, each course requirement carries the following weight:Attendance


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