Course HUAS 6350.

001 The Ars Poetica

Professor Frederick Turner
Term Fall 2010
Meetings Thursday 10:00 am-12:45 pm JO 4.708

Professor’s Contact Information

Office Phone 972-437-2155
Cel Phone 214-213-8581
Office Location JO 5.522
Email Address frederick.turner@gmail.com
Office Hours Thurs 3:15-6:15 pm
I don’t read CT email
Other
For University policy on student citizenship, see
Information
(http://provost.utdallas.edu/home/syllabus-policies-and-procedures-text)

General Course Information

This class will study the ars poetica--the poetic art--both from the
point of view of the reader and from the point of view of the poet. It
will include close readings of great poems in English, practical training in the
art of metrical composition (each student will be expected to be able to
compose a correct sonnet by the end of the semester), and class discussion of
students' own original compositions. The emphasis will be on the formal,
technical, musical, performative, and narrative aspects of poetry.

The ars poetica is a special tradition, involving a poet's individual

poetic philosophy, a theory--not necessarily a systematic one--of
Course language, art, poetic form, aesthetics, and even of human nature and
Description cosmology, that is, the world that the poem addresses. The instructor is
an internationally known poet and translator, and will provide
first-person insight into how poets use their own reading of poetry,
science, philosophy, history, anthropology and so on, and how they use
other arts such as music, painting, drama, film, etc in constructing an
ars poetica.

Assignments will included poetic exercises in form, short quiz essay

answers on the week's reading assignment, and original poems.

1. To demonstrate in practice an ability to write in a formal poetic meter

2. To analyse some classic poems in English
3. To develop a brief artist’s statement of the student’s own ars poetica.
Learning
4. To compose three publishable poems
Outcomes

1
 Ferguson, etc, eds: The Norton Anthology of Poetry
ISBN: 0-393-96820-0

Clement Wood: The Complete Rhyming Dictionary, Dell

ISBN: 978-0440212058

Required Texts Frederick Turner: Paradise: Selected Poems, 1990-2003, David Robert
& Materials Books,
ISBN: 193233937X

Frederick Turner: The Prayers of Dallas, Turning Point

ISBN: 1933456426
LCCN: 2006908359

Suggested Texts,
Readings, & Websites TBA
Materials

Assignments & Academic Calendar

[Topics, Reading Assignments, Due Dates, Exam Dates]

Introduction
Week 1
Principles of poetry. READ Clement Wood: The Poet’s Craft Book, chapters I-
VIII (In the Rhyming Dictionary); The Ballad of True Thomas
Week 2 (http://www.bartleby.com/243/1.html), The Douglas Tragedy—read for PLOT
and NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

Shakespeare. READ Sonnets 5, 6, 11, 12, 17, 18, 55, 57, 60, 64, 65, 67, 68, 76,
110, 111, 116, 129, 130, 146—READ FOR WORDPLAY, ESPECIALLY
Week 3
SONNET 18. WRITE a correct iambic pentameter rhyming couplet of your own.

Donne. READ “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” “The Ecstasy,” “A Nocturnal
upon St. Lucy’s Day,” “Death Be Not Proud”—READ FOR ARGUMENT AND
Week 4
LOGIC. WRITE a poem of your own in any form and bring copies to class.

Milton. READ “Lycidas”—READ FOR ORGANIZATION

Week 5
Pope. READ “The Rape of the Lock”—READ FOR TONE—WHAT IS THE
POINT OF POPE”S ZINGERS? WRITE a correct iambic pentameter quatrain
Week 6
rhymed ABAB or ABCB.

Blake. READ Blake: “The Lamb,” “The Tiger,” “London”—READ FOR

Week 7 SURPRISE--HOW DOES BLAKE JOLT THE READER”S EXPECTATIONS?

Wordsworth. READ: “Intimations of Immortality…”—READ FOR FEELING.

Week 8 WRITE a poem of your own in any form and bring copies to class.

Week 9 Keats. READ “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” “The Eve of St.

2
 Agnes”—READ FOR IMAGERY. WRITE a correct iambic pentameter sonnet
(Shakespearean, Spenserian, or Petrarchan form).

Hopkins, Dickinson. READ Hopkins: “Pied Beauty,” “The Windhover,”, “I

Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark,” “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire;” Dickinson:
Week 10
selection in Norton—READ FOR METER AND MUSIC.

Eliot. READ “The Waste Land”—READ FOR THEME. WRITE a poem of

Week 11 your own in any form and bring copies to class.

Yeats. READ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “An Irish Airman Foresees his
Death,” “The Second Coming,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Byzantium,” “Lapis
Week 12
Lazuli”—READ FOR DICTION.

Turner. READ The Prayers of Dallas—READ FOR CHARACTERIZATION

Week 13
Turner. READ “The Strain of History” and “Saeva Indignatio” sections of
Paradise—READ FOR POINT OF VIEW. WRITE a poem of your own in any
Week 14
form and bring copies to class.

Poetry reading by entire class

REVISE the couplet, quatrain, sonnet, and three other poems of your own:
Week 15 submit all 6 poems with an artist’s statement as a concluding portfolio.

Insert Exam Date(s), At every class meeting except for weeks 1 and 15, each student will answer a
Time(s) quiz on the reading posed by the instructor at the beginning of the class.

Course Policies
A=excellent, B=good, C=Pass. Final grade will be calculated as
Grading (credit)
follows: 1/4 average of quiz grades, 1/4 class discussion
Criteria
participation, 1/2 final portfolio.
Make-up Exams None
Extra Credit None
Late Work Not accepted without major excuse
Special
None
Assignments
Class Missing more than 2 quizzes will result in an F for the entire quiz
Attendance portion of the grade
The Socratic seminar format of the class requires punctuality, no
Classroom early departures, a queue (kept by the professor) for
Citizenship contributions, no side conversations, and a few other rules to be
explained.
Field Trip
No field trips
Policies
These descriptions and timelines are subject to change at the discretion of the
Professor.