W. H. Auden's Syllabus

Take a look at W. H. Auden's course syllabus from 1941 (via New York Daily News). What do you think his students did with 6000 pages of reading for his University of Michigan course in "Fate and the Individual in European Literature?"

It's not clear if this was a 1 or 2 semester course (but only 2 credits!). I read a lot of these as an undergrad too, but probably not in one class.

I know I would have tried my best not to read any opera libretti.

Advanced Book Search

I'm always a bit surprised when I see someone do a search online and be disappointed to get either too few results or, more likely, too many irrelevant results. Most search sites have an "advanced search" feature which often solves those issues and others.

In another context, I wrote about using Google for better search. That's useful for yourself and something anyone who teaches should make sure their students know and use.

But here I just want to mention a more literary search. If you use Amazon to find books, you should also know about and use their advanced search feature.

Start by going to the Advanced Search on Amazon. From there I could set up a search for "poetry" in the literature section and limit my results to those for "teens" published after 1970 and available in paperback format as a way to set up an order for my classroom library.

Looking for a series of exact titles from your 20th Century American Literature syllabus? Enter all the ISBNs in the 'ISBN' field, with a '|' (pipe) between each one.(The "pipe" character is a rarely used one - it's on the same key as the \ character on the right side of a QWERTY keyboard)  So, a search on  9780140285000 | 9780743273565 | 9780061120060 will give those exact 3 titles.

Amazon's advanced search also works for music, TV, movies, magazines and toys and games.

'Crayfish' by Fleur Adcock

Of course with all those legs they�re arthropods �
crayfish, lobsters and their armoured ilk.
At school one day a bunch of us nipped out
in our lunch-break and bought a prickly hulk
to have our way with, rip apart and crunch.

It was like eating a pterodactyl �
morally, I mean, in retrospect �
but the sea-drenched jelly when I snapped
a leg from the carapace, cracked it and sucked in
ecstasy� no,

Tweeting Iambic Pentameter

Another piece of technology is mixing with poetry.

That hesitation right before a kiss
I don't remember ever learning this
I've never had a valentine before
I'm not a little baby anymore

If that is poetry, it's technological "found poetry."  Those rhyming couplets written in iambic pentameter come from Twitter and were found by an algorithm. Yes, those ten-syllable lines of alternating emphasis that we learned about in school when we studied Shakespeare, sonnets and blank verse have been pulled from tweets by a program called Pentametron.

Pentametron (@pentametron on twitter, which you can follow without joining twitter itself)  is set up to monitor public tweets, pull out those in iambic pentameter, look for pairs that rhyme, and then retweet them as a couplet.

The site's motto is:
"With algorithms subtle and discrete
I seek iambic writings to retweet."

Is it poetry? That's your call. But it is interesting that these random couplings sometimes produce logical groupings.

I haven't got the mindset anymore
the tiny inner voice becomes a Roar!
Another boy without a sharper knife.
Closed eye and hoping for a better life

This isn't the first poetry via Twitter site that I have written about. Earlier there was the "Longest Poem in the World" which is still running.

In an NPR interview, the creator of Pentamentron, Ranjit Bhatnagar, said that he had been "... inspired by the exquisite corpse games of the surrealists" and realized that Twitter could supply "an endless waterfall of tweets."

Some make sense -

I wanna be a news reporter, yo
I never listen to the radio

I pay attention to details okay.
Its gonna be a busy day today :(


and others are... well, not so clearly connected

She's like a rainbow, painted black and white.
Not going to the ball tomorrow night.

Of course, a lot of people who don't regularly read poetry might say that "real" poems often don't make sense to them, so...

Pentrametron generates 15 to 20 couplets of 140-characters or less on an average day.

Write in Scotland with Peter Murphy

WRITE in SCOTLAND with PETER MURPHY

GET AWAY TO WRITE - SCOTLAND

August 8-15, 2013

Using the vibrant university city of Dundee as our home base, join us for a week of writing, and exploring this beautiful country. We'll go beyond the typical tourist path and get to know the REAL Scotland. The retreat will feature supportive workshops, readings by local writers, and excursions to Edinburgh, castles, and more. Led by Peter Murphy.

Get away from the grind to write and be inspired. Using Dundee as your home base, you will spend a week writing, relaxing, and exploring this beautiful country, heading beyond the well-worn tourist path, and getting to know the real Scotland. Dundee, a university city of 150,000, bustles with Scottish arts and culture, set alongside a centuries-old seafaring community and 12th-century history.

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER TODAY

www.murphywriting.com

Fault by Joanna Preston

A mistake. An error of judgement. A penalty
brought against a quiet city. Stroll
through the park, lunchtime almost over.
A defect, a small disappointment. A summer day
laden with clouds, grey light that softens the walls,
the stone and brick, the glass. Less
than expected. Someone to blame. A sparrow
rests lightly on the hand of a statue. A weakness
in the system, communications break down

National Haiku Writing Month

This month is the third annual National Haiku Writing Month.  National Haiku Writing Month takes place every February�the shortest month for the shortest genre of poetry.

The logo on the event website is a �No 5-7-5� sign to emphasize that haiku in English does not need to be syllabic lines of 5, 7 and 5.

I came across a post by John J. Dunphy. He owns a used book store called Second Reading Alton, Illinois. He was looking into a copy of The Best American Poetry 1991.

There were some haiku in the collection. Well, poems called "haiku."  A group of haiku by David Trinidad really bothered him. They were haiku based on 1960s TCV comedies like The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan's Island. That sounds pretty lame but that's not what bothered him.

Each haiku is just declarative sentence that has been broken into that three-line, 5-7-5 false form. As Dunphy says, "Cramming a sentence into a 5-7-5 straitjacket does not a haiku make."

I'm with Dunphy. Here's a Trinidad sample:

�Island Girls�
Mary Ann dons one
of Ginger�s dresses, but it
falls flat on her chest.

Japanese haiku poets do use a 5-7-5 format, but it applies to sounds, not syllables. Unfortunately, our syllables do not match our sounds. (Dunphy says that many translators believe that about 12 English syllables approximate the duration of 17 sounds in Japanese language.)

Haiku also don't have titles.

And they do focus on certain themes - especially nature - and imagistic language.

Dunphy provides some haiku of his own as examples, and they are good ones.

ant
on a tree stump
scurrying across decades


spring
the Inuit village
closer to the sea

You should give haiku a try this month. The NaHaiWriMo site has writing prompts. They are also on Facebook, so like them. And if you write haiku, post it on Twitter with the hashtag #nahaiwrimo.