READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS FOR TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2006

Important!! Please make sure that you have set up your individual weblog for the course, and that you write down the URL and bring it in to class on Tuesday so that I can add you to the course blogroll, and give you credit for your weekly blog posts. The first round of blog posts, by the way, will be due no later than midnight on Monday, September 11.

Please click on the links below (unless otherwise noted) to download, print off, and read the following materials:

A Brief Guide to Confessional Poetry, an online poetry entry from the Academy of American Poets. Please also read the Related Prose linked on the left sidebar (in particular, the Zucker, Marvin, and Cane essays). They’re short, and provide a terrific introduction to some of the ideas we’ll be discussing at length in the course.

Confessional Poetry, by Donna M. Ford.

Confessional Poetry and the Artifice of Honesty, by David Yezzi (from The New Criterion, Vol. 16, No. 10, June 1998, pp. 14-21).

No Room in the Booth?: An Appreciation of Confessional Poetry, by Kathleen Osip (from The Writer's Chronicle, February 2001, pp. 45-53). (Will download as a Word document).

Postmodernism, by Professor Mary Klages, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Chapter One - The Poet's Voice as Persona, from Creating Another Self: Voice in Modern American Personal Poetry, by Samuel Maio (Kirksville, MO: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1995). (Will download as a PDF document).

91 Revere Street, by Robert Lowell, from Life Studies, 1959. (Will download as a PDF document).

Please also read the following poems by Robert Lowell from your Selected Poems book:

"The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket," p. 6.
"Beyond the Alps," p. 55.
"To Delmore Schwartz," p. 66.
"Memories of West Street and Lepke," p. 91.
"Skunk Hour," p. 95.

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Poetry-Related Announcement: Come and check out the VLP Poetry Slam, featuring fiction writer and USD faculty member Brian Bedard, on Thursday, August 31, 7:00 p.m., at the Coffee Shop Gallery, 24 W. Main Street. (Have poems that you’d like to read at the slam? Bring three poems with you and sign up to slam!)