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 “To Serve Our Students and the Community through Lifelong Learning.”

Syllabus for Creative Writing in Poetry—English 108             Monday 6:00-8:45 p.m.

Instructor: M. Kulycky
Office Hours: Room 3162: M 3:00-5:00 p.m., WF 3:00-3:45 p.m. or by appointment

Telephone: (708)-596-2000, Extension 2305
e-mail address: mikekulycky@yahoo.com or mkulycky@ssc.edu

Web Page: http://learn.ssc.edu/mkulycky

I. Course Description: This is a class in the creative writing of poetry.  The emphasis is on the critiquing of submitted poems and the offering of suggestions as to the formatting of those poems for best aesthetic effect.  We will read poems from various historical periods and study the different prosodic formats that have evolved within those periods.  The goal behind the readings is to deepen our understanding of the medium of poetry and to thus have more tools available when composing our own poems.

II. Required Texts and Ancillaries:

Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworth. The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Shorter 5^th ed. New York: Norton, 2005.

Hacker, Diana, and Nancy Sommers.  The Bedford Handbook for Writers. 8th ed.

                        Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006.

A jump (flash) drive to save one’s work; An e-mail address to receive files relevant to the instruction (as attachments from the teacher)

III. Reading-Assignments:

August 30—(1) Please begin reading pages 1251 through 1275 (“Versification”) in The Norton Anthology of Poetry

                     (2) Have accessed and saved to your jump drive Bob’s Byway: Glossary of Poetic Terms. http://www.poeticbyway.com/glossary2.html

                     (3) Have read the file “What’s in a Poem—from ‘SoYouWanna’” found under “Poetry” at http://learn.ssc.edu/mkulycky/eng122.htm

September 13—Early English Poems through the 19^th Century—Please read the following poems:

Geoffrey Chaucer—“Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale,” pp. 35-63

William Shakespeare—Sonnets 12, 15, 18, 29, 55, 65, 73, 116, 129—pp. 170-177

John Donne—“The Good Morrow,” p. 191; “Song,” p. 192; “Woman’s Constancy,” p. 192; “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” p. 198; “Sonnet 10,” p. 207; “Sonnet 14,” p. 208

Alexander Pope—“From An Essay on Man, in Four Epistles,” p. 376

William Wordsworth—“She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways,” p. 471; “It Is a Beauteous Evening,” p. 476; “London, 1802,” p. 477; “My Hearth Leaps Up,” p. 478; “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” p. 483; “The World Is Too Much with Us,” p. 484; “The Solitary Reaper,” p. 484

Emily Dickinson—poems on pages 719 through 732

October 11—Twentieth Century and Contemporary Poems—Please read the following poems:

Emily Dickinson—pages 719-732

T.S. Eliot—“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” p. 862; “The Hollow Men,” p. 879

Roy Campbell—“The Zulu Girl,” p. 917; “The Sisters,” p. 918

Robert Frost—“The Road Not Taken,” p. 801; “Birches,” p. 802; “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” p. 803; “Acquainted with the Night,” p. 804; “Provide, Provide,” p. 805

November 15—Free-verse Poems—Please read the following poems:

Walt Whitman—“When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” p. 696

e.e. cummings—“All in Green Went My Love Riding,” p. 892

William Carlos Williams—“The Red Wheelbarrow,” p. 829

W.H. Auden—“Musee des Beaux Arts,” p. 939

Ezra Pound—“The River Merchant’s Wife: A Letter,” p. 846

Sylvia Plath—“Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” from the Internet; “Daddy,” p. 1145

Langston Hughes—“Mother to Son,” from the Internet

IV. Writing-Assignments—Due-dates

(1) August 23^rd—Incoming Impromptu

(2) October 11^th—Please hand in a metered poem containing rhyme and featuring a classical stanzaic format (such as a sonnet, for instance, or a triolet, or a ballad)

(3) October 18^th—Mid-term Exam (Also the day when you have handed in a minimum of twenty of the required forty original poems written for this class)

(4) November 8^th—Please submit a poem written exclusively in metaphors—perhaps a description of something or someone, or exploring a social issue

(5) November 29^th—Please submit a free-verse poem

 (7) A total of at least forty poems submitted throughout the course due by December 6^th

(6) December 13^th—Final Exam

V. Requirements: Please hand your poems in as typed manuscripts, double-spaced and in the Times New Roman 14-point size font--or equivalent--with pages numbered, and all work saved to your flash drive. I’ll not share any of your work with the class unless I have received your permission to do so.

            The last day that creative work will be accepted is December 6th.  At least twenty of the required forty pages of poems should be handed in by October 18th.

VI. Grading: All work will be graded in an even 50/50 manner concerning both (1) the ingenuity of the thinking in terms of content and presentation and (2) the correctness of grammar and punctuation.  Although there is more “freedom” with regard to the conventions of grammar and rhetoric when one is writing a poem, the poem still has to use the rules of grammar and punctuation to best effect.

            Late work loses a full grade, from A to B , B to C, and so forth. As I have mentioned above, the grade will be composed of two aspects: (1) content, which includes creative conceptualization and balanced development, and (2) grammar and punctuation. Most unassigned poems can be corrected and re-submitted for another grade provided that the revisions are substantive and extensive. Please do not hand in any poems that you have written for other classes.

VII. Attendance: Since this is an undergraduate course, good attendance is mandatory. We will help one another to become better writers.  Everyone’s input matters.  And courteous behavior requires prompt and continuous attendance in class.

Absolutely no cell phones are allowed in class--nor may a person leave the room to answer a cell phone in the hall.  If a student is concerned about problems at home, the caretaker at home should call Campus Police at 1-708-596-2000, Extension 2235, and an officer will come to class with any information for that student.