ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult." We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It's much easier than it seems! Join us and try it! ModPo is open all year, so you can enroll now, or any time, and join us. Each year we host a lively, interactive 10-week session, in which we move together through the ten-week syllabus. The next live 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 7, 2019, and will conclude on November 18, 2019. Al Filreis will be in touch with you by email before the September 7 start of the course with all the information you'll need to participate. If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team any time at modpo@writing.upenn.edu. Much more information about ModPo can be found at modpo.org. During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups. If you are curious about the ModPo team, type "ModPo YouTube introduction" into Google or your favorite search engine, and watch the 20-minute introductory video. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end. If you use Facebook, join the always-thriving ModPo group: from inside Facebook, search for "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" and then request to be added as a member. If you have any questions about ModPo, you can post a question to the FB group and you'll receive an almost instant reply. We tweet all year long at @ModPoPenn and you can also find ModPo colleagues using the hashtag #ModPoLive. ModPo is hosted by—and is housed at—the Kelly Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia USA. All ModPo'ers are welcome to visit the Writers House when they are in our area. Our discussions are filmed there. Our live webcasts take place in the famed "Arts Cafe" of the House. To find out what's going on at the Writers House any time, just dial 215-746-POEM.
watch video on Rae Armantrout's "The Way"
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Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)
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From the lesson
chapter 1.2 (week 2)—Whitmanians & Dickinsonians
<p><b>Week 2 of ModPo 2019 runs from Sunday, September 15 at 9 AM through Sunday, September 22 at 9 AM. </b>For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 2 materials are open and available all year.</p><p>During this week, the second half of chapter 1, we will read the work of two poets writing in the Whitmanian mode and three poets writing in the Dickinsonian mode. We will encounter our Whitmanians, William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg, again later in the course—Williams as a modernist and Ginsberg as a Beat poet. The Whitman/Williams/Ginsberg connection is a strong one; Ginsberg wrote directly in response to both Whitman and Williams and saw the lineage as crucial to the development of his approach. Our Dickinsonians are more disparate in their response to Dickinson’s writing. Of the three—Lorine Niedecker, Cid Corman, and Rae Armantrout—only the last could be said to be a direct poetic descendant of Emily Dickinson's aesthetic. </p><p><b>ASSIGNMENTS:</b> During this week, there are two quizzes due and a writing assignment. Writing assignment #1 is open for submission between 9 AM on 9/16/19 and 9 AM on 9/22/19; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 9/23/19 and 9 AM on 9/29/19. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, September 18, at noon (Philadelphia time).</p>
Meet the Instructors
Al FilreisKelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House
So, now we're talking about Rae Armantrout's poem, The Way.
It's, in some ways, the most difficult poem we've studied so far.
Although, I think Dickinson's, Dickinson is just as challenging.
And we know from the various conversations.
We know from Armantrout's method of writing that she's taking pieces,
overheard snippets. Four of them, Card in pew pocket is one.
I made only one statement because of the bad winter is two, greases the word,
greases the way I am feeling, which is from the song, and for real life
emergencies is flooding behind the scene, which seems to be a reality TV show
reference. Four piece is, and then, the fifth part
seems to be a memory. Okay, so we have that.
This is the first time we're seeing, we're moving way forward to the twenty-first
century here. This is the first time we're seeing true
collage, we're seeing an I come from somewhere else.
The I of the second stanza is someone. I think she said someone who's a little
unstable, she overheard. Okay, so what do we do as readers.
Patient, smart, willing open minded readers to accommodate a poem in which the
I is this unstable. First of all, what do we do?
Max what's a what do you suggest someone whose never read a poem in which the I is
coming from everywhere. >> We have to maybe reckon with the fact
that it's different speakers. And that's not so hard to do if you're
told to do it. If you don't know what to do, the I of the
first stanza which seems to be a card in a church that seems to be a quote from
Jesus. And then the second seems to be, could be
the same, could be the speaker, but it turns out to be someone else.
This is very confusing. How do we get through that confusion?
>> Well, we have some strategies. We could, we could accept that.
>> It's different statements that are being made and that they don't all, they
have quotation marks but we sort of have. In the first one here, the I am here, so
[inaudible]. >> Because it's in quotation marks so that
one's a little easier to manage. >> Sure.
>> Molly, what, what are some strategies that we use to deal with this, this
Dickinsonian but also post modern aesthetic?
Where the I is really nomadic. >> We have to sort of look at it as a
whole rather than focusing on what each voice is saying.
I think of what it means to have all these voices put together.
>> What does it mean to have so many different voices appear in the same short
poem? >> Well it's the way hat she's telling the
story from experience from things that she sees and she reads.
>> It's a new kind of story though what kind of story, why is it new?
>> Cuz nobody has done it before. Cuz it's, it's a collage made from sort of
real life experience rather than one person's thoughts.
>> So she's not, she's not got a notebook that.
It's a diary for feelings and in recording for the I.
She's got a notebook of overheard statements, or curious locutions, which
she then reports to us from different subjectivities.
Anna, how do you deal with this? >> Well, I, I guess I sort of had to come
at this as, as a twenty-first century, you're gonna hate me for this, Whitman.
Because if you think about Whitman doing the Blab of the Pave, there's the I but
he's observing everything. And what she's done is she's an I
observing everything, but she's internalized it.
And then, remade it so that it's all unified in, in an I that the I is coming
from many different angles. >> Well yes and no.
I mean what's Whitmanian here is the. >> Is the inclusivity.
>> Allowance of. Right, inclusivity.
But what's different is that Walt is not going to use the I in such a way.
>> I agree. So it's.
That's the. She's the kind of twenty-first century.
>> Okay. >> I think almost version of that I think.
>> Fair enough. I mean I, I just have to point out.
>> Sure. >> That Walt is not gonna use a collage
style or. >> No he's not.
>> He's not gonna do this at all. But he.
Okay. He certainly.
>> Walt does come back, he does come back, not so much in Armantrout, I would say,
but in, but in, conceptual poets. So Kristen how do you deal with a poem
like this? >> I guess, what I would do is.
>> And does it bother, does it annoy you to be so [inaudible]?
>> It doesn't annoy me because what you have, the way I go into it is, knowing
that there is no narrative and so, I am not looking for a threat to carry me
through the whole poem, treating it in the chunks, that it is in.
>> Hm. >> So, I am not saying that the I am here
in the first, that it's going to be the same as, as a child I was abandoned.
>> When you get to the second part of the poem.
So it's not a continuous matter. >> So Emily what, we've heard comments on
the religious aspect to this thing. Card in the pew pocket announces I am
here. How does that, what a way to start a poem.
What do we do with that? Alright the speaker is reminding us of the
presence of the son of God, the savior. The speaker is speaking to us from a card
in the pew pocket. >> How does that lead us into the rest of
the poem? What an unusual start.
What a displacement. >> Well it establishes the fact that the
location of the I sort of physically or existentially is contested in like every
possible way. Is that I the speaker of the poem?
Is it God? Is it whoever else authored that line?
Is it I think that we can assume that it wasn't actually authored by God and that
it's not, I don't think it's so much we have to reconcile with the I could be in
this poem but the fact that the poet doesn't want there to be an eye.
>> That I think she's trying to undermine and discard that notion.
And complicate it as much as possible. >> That's great.
So how would you, if you were forced to, characterize the I of the first stanza?
What would you say, what kind of I, I mean, almost in a grammatical way where is
this I coming from? It's a, it's a tough question.
>> Try to see where you're trying to lead in here.
>> What, somebody characterize the I of the first, we're gonna get to characterize
the I of the second, but what's the? How do we characterize the I of the first?
>> Give it a name, a character, as if it's Jesus.
>> How does the I function in the first, it doesn't speak for the speaker.
Because it's in quotes, it doesn't seem to speak for an other.
It's from somewhere else, it's a kind of general presence.
Alright. And the second one.
Emily back to you. I made only one statement because of a bad
winter. What does, what does I seem to come from,
not necessarily knowing what Ray told us? >> It would seem to come from, at this
point in the poem, from the disembodied. Voice that is narrating finding that card
in the pew pocket possibly. >> So it would seem to be.
Then knowing that there is a dislocation between the first stanza and the second,
where did your mind go to produce the I of the second.
What, what happened? Dave what happens, what's different?
Emily was describing what in a normal consistent I what we would do.
We would see okay, so Jesus or the person who created the card only made one
statement. And in fact I am here is only one
statement. But, we know that the I is moving around.
So what do we do with the second one. >> Well.
>> Well, the way I read it, starting out with being in a church, as the setting.
I am here being Jesus. I made only one statement because of a bad
winter, to me, seems like it was stepping back and being God and God who has made
the statement of Jesus. >> But if we want that not to be
continuous, where is the seed to come from?
When we think of this as coming from somewhere else, what kind of statement is
it? What kind of statement is it?
Where's it coming from? What sort of statement is being made?
Where do we hear this kind of statement? >> Well, he talked about dislocation as,
as far as, you know, dividing these different statements into coming from
different locales. Not just within the.
>> Right, right. >> Like, you know, cause a writer could
have different, you know, say I'm gonna write about this, I'm gonna write about
that. And the voices may be different, but I
think they're coming from completely different people.
>> Completely different. >> Altogether.
And, and you get that dislocation from, from the line breaks and this lovely white
space. >> So you.
>> That. >> Who would say such a thing, where is
this coming from, the statement about a bad winter?
>> It sounds like Hamlet to me almost. >> [laugh] >> Or like a line from a book.
Like it sounds very dramatic very sort of vague or foreboding.
>> So we have one kind of I in the first, we have a very different kind of I in the
second, what about the third one Max? What kind of I is this?
>> This is a. >> Grease is the word.
Where's that coming from? >> Well we know that that's coming from
Grease. >> From the, from the musical.
>> From the musical, sure. But here in this case it's.
>> It's describing if, if we remove it from that context.
The I here is, is, is describing a, a, a person.
If, if it was, who's feeling this way, who's feeling anyway.
Just someone. >> So, so normally if someone says this is
the way I am feeling, its, its an expression, but it, its an expression
itself. But in this, its not.
Because its a quotation from a musical. >> Yeah.
>> So, what's the I in the musical? I mean, what, this is not self-expression.
No one is talking about their emotions. >> V.
>> What is it? >> V, It's well, it's, it's, a character.
>> Bejesus. >> It's, it's, its, it's a popular culture
I. >> Yeah.
>> It's a kind of. >> Kind of collective cultural I.
>> It fits with the meter. It's, this isn't about deep feeling so
she's ranging across the kinds of Is that we have.
The fourth section doesn't have an I so we skip it.
Now we go to the last section, there's an I.
>> As a child, I was abandoned, in the story.
This is yet another I. This is the I we always, that we
conventionally expect. >> The I of the poet.
>> The I of the poet. The I, I, I of someone remembering her
childhood. We finally get to an eye that we
recognize, but we've been dislocated through the other eyes.
Do you see what I'm getting at? So, we have a poem that readies you for a
fresh look at the conventional I by doing all kinds of other things.
By finding eyes across the landscape. There are I's that are not at all
subjective. There are I's that are from on high.
There are I's that are using the conventional rhetoric of feeling, of
self-expression, but are part of a Broadway musical, that aren't very.
You don't hear an I on Broadway and think. Emotion is being said.
So now we get to the memory and finally we get a relatively, I don't want to say,
conventional lyrics but a more straight forward memory, so tell us about this,
Have any of you been read stories? By mom.
>> Amaris? >> Yep, many a time.
>> So what is the memory here? What kind of memory is it?
>> She's remembering being read I see in fiction or story books by her mother as a
child, and the way I saw it was that she's exploring various cultural modes of, of
being at the beginning of the poem. Then reference to the title maybe the way
the first answer refers to her like a religious way of being.
>> Yes. >> The second, to perhaps an economic, I
read it as having maybe conotations of legal statements or bank statements.
That's off base clearly since she says, like, it was from an insane person, but
that was the way I initially read it. >> Mm-hm.
>> And then Greece seems to be this very free flowing musical way of being.
>> Yes. >> That's contingent, non desire and
intuition on some sort of impulse. And then at the end it feels like all of
these collectively cohere in a being in fiction or in the imagination.
>> So let's talk about the way in the story told to a child.
>> Mm-hm. >> What is it?
>> It's the child able to inhabit. >> All of the various selves at the same
time. >> That's too fancy and abstract.
>> Oh. >> That, being, being that they're always
being read the story. >> To disassociate them ...
>> Or being told the story by your Mom, what's the way?
>> The way. >> What path do you take?
Where are you going? >> Into imagination.
Into fiction. >> Sure.
She was abandoned in a story made of trees.
Go with that. >> So probably her mom didn't finish the
story that night. >> Maybe.
Maybe abandon is a good thing. >> Yeah.
She lost herself in the story. >> This is, this is the, this is the, yes
Molly this is the scene of instruction. This is where.
This is a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl.
This is the, she's recording either the moment or the sort of moment when she was
a girl and she lost her, she had that first experience of super-involvement, and
she was abandoned. When her mother introduced her to the
imagination through stories, her mother in a sense gave her the greatest gift a
mother could give, which is how to survive me, the mother.
When I'm gone, you will have stories, you will have my stories, but you will be
lost. >> You will learn how to be lost.
And, so when you think of mothers abandoning children, you think of this
horrible scene. When in fact, this is sort of a blessing.
Abandoning story made of trees. Either the story has trees in it or was
the story about a little girl lost in? Hansel and Gretel have always been
suggested. But, what else could made of trees mean?
>> Books? Paper?
>> Paper, books. >> A story made of trees.
I can see the young Emily Harnett who loves books.
Just lost in the book, abandoned. >> [laugh] >> Like my mom got me started
on the story, the idea of the story. And that is the way, the way, the path.
Gretel lost. >> Exactly, yeah.
>> Right, but also, the way. The way, into the forest of story.
And then she's so far into it, she says, here is.
To the small gasp of this clearing. >> Here?
Uh-oh another one of those words Amaris. She's lost and now comes upon a here.
Say more about that. >> Well here is always the self
referentiality that we've been talking about, but here I think maybe the small
gasp. Imagining like the story made of trees you
have like these woods that she's kind of like lost in, wandering in.
>> In the story? >> In the story, and then you come upon
this, this clearing. So the clearing could be.
Okay. Sorry [inaudible] like, time to enter a
story for tonight, so you can kind of like, come out of your.
>> Sort of being in the story. >> Mm-hm.
>> Being abandoned in the story. >> But what else can here be?
You haven't defined it here. Here is, well I think the small gasp is
her moment of realization like this is what I'm suppose to do.
This is what I'm made to do. >> The small gasp.
>> And that's the here? >> And that's the here, I think.
>> Okay, someone else help her with here. >> I think Here is religion.
I read this poem entirely as a religious poem, and I feel like here is the
religion. That's the clearing, that's what is the
path, the way which brings here out of the trees.
>> Okay, so that's one, one here. >> Does she wanna go out of the trees,
though? >> No, I think it's, I think it's mocking
religion. >> At least that's how I choose to
interpret it, cuz I like that interpretation better.
>> I think your plea like an offering to, here's this, this small gasp.
>> I think she purposely brings the here back so she can alter it, so in the
beginning we have this very authoritative in a church setting, I am here, and in the
end. >> We've moved to a more, it seems like a
setting of pagan ritual. The forest, the woods and rather than a
statement, we have a small gasp which is the moment of dissociation or the moment
of pause. >> The gasp is the, is when you are lost
and you come upon a clearing. You know where you are, you come to an
open space. The gasp is the gasp of surprise and
finding yourself again. >> Mm-hm.
Here's the small gasp of this clearing come upon again.
Why again? >> Isn't upon normally how way we start
sort of children's stories? Once a upon a time that it implies.
>> Absolutely. >> A sort of a singleness of something
that has happened once but the sort of. >> Upon as in quotes.
>> Yeah. It's a returning to that once a upon a
time that single moment means that story telling process is infinitely accessible
and achievable. >> Always, always again.
Every time not just ever time one remembers.
The mother introducing you to the, to the heaven of pleasure of the story.
Of being somewhere else other than where you are escaping I guess is the word into
the story. Being lost in the book that's the phrase.
Every time you do it again you experience it again.
Here's a small desk this once again I have the, the experience of delightful surprise
in the realm of the imagination. >> Again, we come upon again.
>> And I think that's another reason why it's in quotation marks because we began
with found language, moved briefly to the poets eye and then we come back again, if
it's indeed referencing story book language.
That is the words of another. So, perhaps the idea that it's in
quotations is the fact that we have her return to the realm of fiction.
Like you just said. >> Now, a little while ago, Anna did her
almost automatic reference, to the self reference of here, but you didn't actually
say what here means. So, if you get another shot.
I think, here and this are functioning almost in the same way.
Of being here, here the poem and this. >> Here is here.
>> This poem and this being the writing of the poem.
>> And this clearing is also here.. >> Yeah, I think they are functioning in
the same way but not the same that. >> One comes upon sorry one comes upon
again this clearing in a poem, which begins with fragments from other
subjectivities we not, we don't know where, even with Ray's help.
And then one comes upon the story of origin of stories for this particular
writer. And so here.
This last piece, this memory of childhood discovery of the imagination is where we
are now, with her. This, this clearing.
So this, this poem, or the end of it becomes the clearing.
Now, what, so, let's wrap up by saying why, why is it worth readers, to go
through such, this is not an easy poem. >> What's, Amarise, what's, what's good
about difficult reading? >> To me it expresses a mode of existence
in the, the current times. So this sense of fracture that I feel
throughout it I can really relate to and respond to.
And so going through it and some, the way we've sort of developed a coherence among
the many different I's is, is reassuring and gratifying in a way.
So, so. >> Yeah.
Who else wants to defend? Spending so much effort on a poem like
this, why, Max, what would, what would you say in defense Rae Armantrout to somebody
who says, why should I work so hard, why can't it be clearer?
>> Why I agree with [inaudible]. I think it's, it's definitely, it
describes a way of, of reading or working or.
>> Maybe the way. >> Or of course the way.
For Armantrout's state, the way. >> Yeah, and for you it's a way.
>> I, I think it's, it's hard to say that anything could be the way, but I think
it's, it's certainly a, an arguable way of being.
There, there's this sort of synthesis of or, or harmony of, of things that we find
and things that we feel, and. So you have these sort of fractures, or
fractured statements, bits of language. Moment of confusion and this moment of
clarity and that these things are sort of, can exist side by side or that they should
exist side by side. Nice, I guess I would say finally that the
pathos of abandonment. Of remembering your mother reading to you.
And then thinking of it as abandonment, abandonment.
It's a sort of this is good for you one day when you're independent you will be
happy that I taught you how to lose yourself.
And it's only that adult, that person who has learned that, that can produce the
first part of the poem and not be frightened by the fracturing of the
contemporary subject.
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