Cultural Territories: American Poetry from World War II to the Present

Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Note: This is less a syllabus than one model of how a contemporary poetry course could be organized topically. In most cases instructors would need to select a smaller number of poems from each unit. Nor are these by any means the only possible thematic or historical groupings. Many people would want to alternate these comparative topics with classes devoted to the work of individual poets. All of these poems are in Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press). All of the poets will have entries on the web site. Note that some of these poems could be shifted from one topic to another. It would also be easy to add representative forerunners from earlier decades to several of these groups. "MAPS" refers to this website.

 Weeks One-Two: Remembering World War II
Background Reading: "About World War II" (MAPS)

Randall Jarrell, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," "A Front," "Losses," "Second Air Force"

Joy Davidman, "For the Nazis"

Yusef Komunyakaa, "The Nazi Doll"

Japanese American Concentration Camp Haiku

Sesshu Foster, "Life Magazine, December 1941"

George Oppen, "(In Alsace)"

Robinson Jeffers, "Fantasy"

Thomas McGrath, "Crash Report"

Ai, "The German Army, Russia, 1943," "The Testimony of J. Robert Oppenheimer"

Muriel Rukeyser, "Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)"

Gwendolyn Brooks, "Gay Chaps at the Bar"

Philip Levine, "The Horse"

Randall Jarrell, "Protocols"

Charles Reznikoff, "Massacres"

Anthony Hecht, "More Light!, More Light!"

Robert Pinsky, "The Unseen"

Weeks Three-Four: The Anxious 1950s

Edwin Rolfe, "Now the Fog," "A Letter to the Denouncers," "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," "A Poem to Delight My Friends Who Laugh at Science-Fiction," "Little Ballad for Americans——1954"

Thomas McGrath, "Against the False Magicians"

Richard Wilbur, "A Baroque Wall-Fountain in the Villa Sciarra"

Robert Lowell, "Inauguration Day: January 1953," "Memories of West Street and Lepke," "Skunk Hour"

Elizabeth Bishop, "At the Fishhouses"

Weldon Kees, "Travels in North America"

Allen Ginsberg, "Howl"

Adrienne Rich, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers"

Sylvia Plath, "The Colossus"

James Wright, "Saint Judas"

Gregory Corso, "Bomb"

Week Five: The Conflict Over Religion

Langston Hughes, "Christ in Alabama" (1931), "Late Corner"

Muriel Rukeyser, "(To be a Jew in the Twentieth century)"

George Oppen, "Exodus"

William Everson, "Canticle for the Waterbirds"

Carolyn M. Rodgers, ""Mama's God," "and when the revolution came"

Amiri Baraka, "When We Worship Jesus"

Thylias Moss, "Fullness"

Robert Creeley, "After Lorca"

Lucille Clifton, "brothers"

Ai, "The Priest's Confession"

Week Six: Song as Witness in the New Black Poetry
Background Reading: "About the Black Arts Movement" (MAPS)

Langston Hughes, "Ku Klux," "Shakespeare in Harlem," "Madam and the Phone Bill," "Ballad of the Landlord"

Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed," "We Real Cool," "The Boy Died in My Alley"

Dudley Randall, "Ballad of Birmingham"

Robert Hayden "Runagate Runagate," "Night, Death, Mississippi"

Etheridge Knight, "A Poem for Myself," "For Malcolm, a Year After," "For Black Poets Who Think of Suicide"

Michael Harper, "Song: I Want a Witness," "Blue Ruth: America," "Brother John," "We Assume: On the Death of Our Son, Reuben Masai Harper," "Dear John, Dear Coltrane"

Lucille Clifton, "I Am Accused of Tending to the Past," "at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989"

Ishmael Reed, "I am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Henry Dumas, "Son of Msippi," "Kef 24," "Kef 16," "Fish," "Low Down Dog Blues"

Bob Kaufman, "The Biggest Fisherman," "Crootey Songo," "No More Jazz at Alcatraz"

Jayne Cortez, "I am New York City," "Do You Think"

Thylias Moss, "There Will Be Animals"

Audre Lourde, "Call"

Weeks Seven-Eight: Natural Resources

Robinson Jeffers, "Vulture," "Birds and Fishes"

Theodore Roethke, "Cuttings," "Cuttings (later)," "North American Sequence"

William Everson, "Canticle for the Waterbirds"

Elizabeth Bishop, "The Fish," "Pink Dog"

Sylvia Plath, "Black Rook in Rainy Weather," "Tulips"

Ruth Stone, "From the Arboretum," "Drought in the Lower Fields"

Robert Duncan, "Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow"

Gary Snyder, "Riprap," "Straight-Creek——Great Burn"

Lorine Niedecker, "Paean to Place"

N. Scott Momaday, "Plainview: 3," "Buteo Regalis," "Crows in a Winter Composition"

William Stafford, "Traveling Through the Dark"

Robert Penn Warren, "Evening Hawk," "Heart of Autumn"

Louise Bogan, "The Dragonfly"

A. R. Ammons, "Corsons Inlet," "Gravelly Run"

Galway Kinnell, "The Bear," "The Porcupine"

Robert Bly, "Looking at New-Fallen Snow from a Train," "The Dead Seal Near McClure's Beach"

James Wright, "Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota," "A Blessing"

Stanley Kunitz, "The Wellfleet Whale," "The Snakes of September"

Mary Oliver, "The Lillies Break Open Over Dark Water," "Black Snake This Time"

Anita Endrezze, "Birdwatching at Fan Lake"

Adrian C. Louis, "Looking for Judas"

C. D. Wright, "Song of the Gourd"

W.S. Merwin, "For a Coming Extinction," "Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise," "Beginning," "The Horse"

Week Nine: The Vietnam War
Background reading: "About the Vietnam War" (MAPS)

Robert Bly, "Counting Small-boned Bodies"

Denise Levertov, "What Were They Like?," "Life at War"

Judy Grahn, "Vietnamese Woman Speaking to an American Soldier"

Allen Ginsberg, "Wichita Vortex Sutra"

Robert Duncan, "Up Rising"

Yusef Komunyakaa, "Tu Do Street," "Prisoners," "Communique"

Thomas McGrath, "Ode for the American Dead in Asia"

Robert Lowell, "The March I," "The March II"

W. S. Merwin, "The Asians Dying," "When the War is Over," "Caesar"

Adrienne Rich, "Shooting Script"

Weeks Ten-Eleven: The New Feminism

Sylvia Plath, "Ariel," "Lady Lazarus," "Daddy," [the Bee poems: "The Bee Meeting," "The Arrival of the Bee Box," "Stings," "The Swarm," "Wintering"]

Anne Sexton, "Her Kind," "And One for My Dame"

Adrienne Rich, "Trying to Talk with a Man," "Diving into the Wreck," "Twenty-One Love Poems," "Power"

Denise Levertov, "Olga Poems"

Maxine Kumin, "Voices from Kansas"

Ruth Stone, "In an Iridescent Time," "I Have Three Daughters," "Pokeberries"

Carolyn M. Rodgers, "how i got ovah"

Muriel Rukeyser, "The Poem as Mask," "Rite"

Lucille Clifton, "poem to my uterus," "to my last period"

Judy Grahn, "I Have Come to Claim Marilyn Monroe's Body," "Carol," "Plainsong," "The Woman Whose Head is On Fire"

Robert Hass, "A Story About the Body"

Thylias Moss, "Crystals"

Gwendolyn Brooks, "To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals"

Audre Lorde, "Sisters in Arms," "Outlines"

Sandra Cisneros, "Little Clown, My Heart"

Louise Gluck, "Penelope's Song," "Circe's Power," "Circe's Grief"

Weeks Twelve-Thirteen: The New Native American Poetry

N. Scott Momaday, "Carriers of the Dream Wheel," "Rings of Bone," "The Stalker," "Purple," "The Burning," December 29, 1890," "The Shield That Came Back"

Louise Erdrich, "Indian Boarding School: The Runaways," "Dear John Wayne"

Wendy Rose, "Truganinny"

Anita Endrezze, "Return of the Wolves"

Adrian C. Louis, "Dust World," "Wakinyan," "Without Words," "Coyote Night," "How Verdell and Dr. Zhivago Disassembled the Soviet Union," "Wanbli Gleska Win," "A Colossal American Copulation," "Petroglyphs of Serena"

Sherman Alexie, "Indian Boy Love Song," "No. 9," "Evolution," "Scalp Dance by Spokane Indians," "How to Write the Great American Novel," "Tourists"

Ray A. Young Bear, "In Viewpoint: Poem for 14 Catfish and the Town of Tama, Iowa," "It is the Fish-faced Boy Who Struggles"

Week Fourteen: Multiculturalism With an Edge

Etheridge Knight, "Haiku," "The Idea of Ancestry"

Yusef Komunyakaa, "Work"

Martín Espada, "Bully," "Federico's Ghost," "The Saint Vincent de Paul Food Pantry Stomp," "Fidel in Ohio," "Imagine the Angels of Bread"

Lucille Clifton, "Reply"

Patricia Smith, "What It's Like to Be a Black Girl (For Those of You Who Aren't)," "Blond White Women," "Skinhead"

Marilyn Chin, "How I Got That Name"

Sesshu Foster, ""We're caffinated by rain . . . ," "You'll be fucked up," "Look and look again . . .," "I'm always grateful . . .," "I try to pee but I can't"

Garrett Kaoru Hongo, "Ancestral Graves, Kahuku"

Jimmy Santiago Baca, "Mi Tio El Poeta De Socorro"

Ana Castillo, "Seduced by Natassja Kinski"

Jessica Hagedorn, "Ming the Mercilous"

Mark Doty, "Homo Will Not Inherit"

Week Fifteen: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetries

C. D. Wright, "OVER EVERYTHING"

Ron Silliman, from Ketjak, from "Sunset Debris," "The Chinese Notebook," from Toner

Harryette Mullen, from Trimmings, from S*PeRM**K*T

Michael Palmer, "Song of the Round Man," "All Those Words," "I Have Answers to All of Your Questions," "Fifth Prose," "Autobiography"

Susan Howe, "The Falls Fight," "Hope Atherton's Wanderings"

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