The Art of the Sonnet

Upcoming Class

May 20

Class #10

Modern Voices

• Session 1: Marilyn Nelson, pg. 296-297
  • Focus on:
    • “The Balance” pg. 296
    • “The Chosen” pg. 296
    • Three sonnets from A Wreath for Emmett Till
• Session 2: Discussion: The sonnet genre and the sonnet tradition
  • Focus on: Prompts for discussion

Recommendations Week by Week

Mar. 18

Class #1

Introductions

Session 1: Introduction to the Classs

Session 2: Introduction to the Features of the Sonnet

     o   Michael Drayton’s sonnet # 61  Pg. 35

Session 3: Guest speaker: Dr. Phillis Levin, editor, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: Five Hundred Years of a Classic Tradition in English. 

     o   Beginnings of the Sonnet Tradition

     o   Petrachan Sonnet: Pattern and Structure

     o   Sonnets by John Milton and Marilyn Nelson

     o   Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Hayes

 

Class #2  The Shakespearean Sonnet

Mar. 25

• Session 1: Linda: Sir Philip Sidney 
  • Sidney, from Astrophel and Stella: #1 on pg. 20; #41 on pg. 23; #54 on pg. 24; , #71 on pg. 25
    • Sonnet #1 read aloud.
• Session 2: Karen: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, pg. 40
  • Sir Patrick Stewart reading Shakespeare's sonnet # 18
• Session 3: Chris: Shakespeare's Sonnet 128, pg. 49
  • Sir Patrick Stewart reading Shakespeare’s sonnet #128

 

April 1

Class #3

The Sonnet by a Metaphysical and by a Puritan Humanist

Session 1: John Donne

     o   Pgs. 55 - 63

Session 2: John Milton

     o   Pgs. 78 - 82

Session 3: Lady Mary Wroth; George Herbert

     o   Pgs. 74 – 77

 

April 8

Class #4

The Sonnet According to the Romantics

• Session 1: William Wordsworth Pgs. 89-94
  • Focus on: 
    • “Nuns fret not…” pg. 89. 
    • “London, 1802,” pg. 92
    • Surprised by Joy . . . impatient as the wind” pg. 93
• Session 2: John Keats Pgs. 109-114
  • Focus on: 
    • "On the Grasshopper and the Cricket” pg. 111 
    • “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” pg. 109
• Session 3: Percy Bysshe Shelley, 
  • Focus on:
    • “Ozymandias” pg. 103 
    • “Ode to the West Wind” pgs. 104-106 
    • “England in 1819” pg. 104
      • An actor reads Shelley’s revolutionary sonnet

 

Session 1: Gerard Manley Hopkins: pgs. 144-151

• Focus on: 
  • “As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame” pg. 144 
  • “Carrion Comfort” pg. 149 
  • “Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend” p.151 
  • “That Nature is a Heraclitean fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection” pg. 150
  • “The Windhover” pg. 145
    • A very dramatic reading of “The Windhover.”  
    • A discussion of the poem and another reading of it (about 12 minutes). 
    • A reader’s guide to the poem (the author describes it as “A rapturous re-reading of the poet’s love poem to life,”)  by Angie Mlinko. 

Session 2: William Butler Yeats, pgs. 155 - 158

• Focus on:
  • “Leda and the Swan” pg. 157
  • "The Fascination of What’s Difficult” pg. 155
  • "All Things Can Tempt Me” click here

Session 3: Dante Gabriel Rossetti & Christina Rossetti

• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, pgs. 134 - 136
  • Fccus on “Silent Noon” pg. 135
• Christina Rossetti, pgs. 137 - 138
  • Focus on “Rest” pg. 136;  “Remember” click here.

 

 

April 22

Class #6

African American Sonneteers

• Session 1: Gwendolyn Brooks, pgs. 226 - 229
  • Focus on:  
    • "Gay Chaps at the Bar" pg. 227 
    • "Piano After War" pg. 228 

Countee Cullin, Pgs. 207

• Session 2: Countee Cullen, pg. 207
  • “Yet Do I Marvel” pg. 207
  • “At the Wailing Wall in Jerusalm” pg. 207
• Session 3: Robert Hayden, pg. 219
  • Focus on:  
    • “Those Winter Sundays” pg. 219
    • “Frederick Douglass” pg. 219

 

April 29

Class #7

Other American Sonneteers

• Session 1: Edna St. Vincent Millay pgs. 183-191
  • Focus on: 
    • From Fatal Interview: XXX. "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink" pg. 189 
    • "Read history: so learn your place in Time" pg. 190
    • “Recuerdo” (download); 
      • Millay reads "Recuerdo"
• Session 2: e.e. cummings,  pgs. 194 – 200
  • Focus on:
    • I carry your heart with me(carry it in,” pg. 200
    • “next to of course god america i,” pg. 199
• Session 3: Robert Frost, pg. 168 - 173
  • Focus on: 
    • “Mowing” pg. 169  
    • “The Oven Bird” pg. 170  
    • "Design” pg. 172 

 

May 6

Class #8

Modern voices

• Session 1: W H Auden. Pgs. 210-214
  • Focus on:
    •  "Our Bias"  pg. 211 
    • "The Door” pg. 213
• Session 2: Robert Lowell. Pgs.  230-232
  • Focus on: 
    • “”Ezra Pound” pg.231
    • “Dolphin” pg. 233
    • "Robert Frost” pg. 231
• Session 3: Linda: Elizabeth Bishop Pgs. 217 - 218
  • "The Prodigal" pg. 217 
  • “Sonnet" pg. 218 

 

May 13

Class #9

Modern Voices

• Session 1: Seamus Heaney, pgs. 271-274
  • Focus on:  
    • “Act of Union” 1, pg. 272
      • Seamus Heaney reads the poem
    • “The Forge” pg. 271
    • A blacksmith working at the forge
• Session 2: Adrienne Rich, pgs. 254-256
  • Focus on:
    •  from Contradictions: Tracking Poems “1” pg. 254
    • "Final Notations” pg. 256
• Session 3: Billy Collins, pgs. 276 - 277
  • Focus on:
    •  “American Sonnet” pg. 276 
    • “The Golden Years” 
    • Extra reading: 
      • "The Night House" (1998) 
      • "You, Reader" (2005) 
      • "Litany" (2002) - recited from memory by a 3-year old! 
      • Collins reading “Forgetfulness” and “The Lanyard” at the Obama White House in 2011 
      • Review of Collins’ Sailing Alone Around the Room by Dennis O'Driscoll, Poetry magazine.

 

May 20

Class #10

Modern Voices

• Session 1: Marilyn Nelson, pg. 296-297
  • Focus on:
    • “The Balance” pg. 296
    • “The Chosen” pg. 296
    • Three sonnets from A Wreath for Emmett Till
• Session 2: Discussion: The sonnet genre and the sonnet tradition
  • Focus on: Prompts for discussion

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