Rationale

Today’s college students can be called Generation D. Digitalization—e. g., internet, cell phone, music, TV--occupies a major share of their waking hours. Information, like entertainment, is global, instantaneous; the irreducibly local takes too much time. Classrooms operate by power point. Distance learning expands. The gap in space and time between the streets of Baghdad or Gaza, for instance, and our groves of academe is closing fast.

Ever-heightened efficiency in data transmission, however, is not without cost. Students enrolled in value-laden subject areas such as literature, philosophy or peace studies need time to contemplate, assimilate and experience their learnings. Hastened, such endeavor, necessarily complex, contingent, and culturally-sensitive, runs some risk of burn-out or abandon. Serious examination of the long-term life and death issues arising out of the interplay of violent and non-violent alternatives needs to include patient self-discipline in a context of social rapport.

This, in fact, is a way of talking about the robust resources of the poetic enterprise, particularly as it functions in the service of peace. In times of severe spiritual stress and societal disorder, exemplary poets throughout history have with faithful labor nourished hope for the future. This course aims at enabling students, as readers and/or writers, to participate as maturing members of that poetic community. At its best, this course will serve them as an investment in sustainable peacemaking.

Opening Questions

The scope and intention of the course may be found in some opening questions for class discussion:

1. Given history’s record of unmitigated violence against humanity (e. g., the

Trojan War, Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, the American Civil War, the

Holocaust, Rwanda, Columbine, 9/11, Abu Ghraib), can any form of

art presume to speak about the unspeakable?

2. If so, what are some exemplary instances?

3. Can a non-pacifist compose a peace poem?

4. In the best peace poems, how, simultaneously, do style and content each play their part?

5. What experiences and stylistic techniques might be employed by students in this class?

6. In the effort to compose a “perfect” poem how does one know when to stop?

7. What resources among one’s peers exist to help answer that question?

8. At the end of the course, how does one answer question 1.?

Activities

A maximum of 15 students will read, write, speak, and discuss poems arising from three subject areas:

1. historical social crises (e. g., Trojan War, French Revolution, Bleeding Kansas, W. W. I and II),

2. contemporary systemic social problems (e. g., race, poverty, environment),

3. the current U. S. inclination toward dominance through pre-emptive war.

Assignments

1. readings in poetry, criticism, and socially relevant essays,

2. daily poetry journal,

3. composition of three lyric poems, one based on each of the above three areas,

4. written self-commentary about the composition of each of the three poems,

5. prepared contributions to group discussion of lectures, assigned readings,

journal entries, and poems-in-progress,

6. compilation of a chapbook of class poems and commentaries,

7. a final personal essay reporting on a significant future interest arising out of the course.

Texts

1. Paul Loeb, ed., The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Consumer’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books, 2004). Poems and essays.

2. Sam Hamill, ed., Poets Against the War (Nation Books, 2003). Anthology

drawn from thousands of poems written against the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

3. Selected poems (supplied) from Homer to Yeats (including Swift, Gray,

Blake, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Arnold, Dickinson, Crane, Owen, Marianne Moore), plus multiple poems by poets in the Loeb text:

Marge Piercy

Martin Espada

Sam Hamill

Maya Angelou

Seamus Heaney

4. Some selected poems by peace church poets.

5. Films:

The Postman (Neruda and the poetries of love and resistance).

Tennessee Williams, The Night of the Iguana (poetry as a life).

Teaching modules (six-period sequences on each of the above five poets)

1. Introductory lecture on the poet’s social setting and personal style.

1. Class discussion of module’s assigned readings, poetry and prose.

2. Writing workshop.

3. Class discussion of module’s assigned readings, poetry and prose.

4. Lecture on key poem(s) by poet.

5. Writing workshop.

Several extra class periods are left available throughout the course for introductory orientation, special topics, field trip(s), etc.