For Credit: Political Poetry

By popular request, we'll be focusing on the more political poetry in MMM's Book for Wednesday (4/1). I'll expect you all to be familiar with

The Female Patriots. Addressed to the Daughters of Liberty (Hannah Griffitts), p. 172
New Jail. Philadelphia Jany. 1st 1776 (Unattributed), p. 198
The Patriotic Minority in Both Houses of the British Parliament (Hannah Griffitts), p. 244
The Ladies Lamentation over an Empty Cannister (Hannah Griffitts), p. 247

Some questions you might like to address in response to this blog post:

Do these poems present a coherent and seamless set of political views, or do they display some tension and uncertainty?
Does the tone and style differ in any interesting ways from the poems by Susannah Wright that we've read in class from this book?
What do you find in these poems that complicates your understanding of the woman-authored poetry of this period?
How would you describe the political agency that Griffitts displays in these poems? Is there a meaningful distinction between to be drawn between the political agency they show and the poetic/aesthetic agency at work in them?

Deadline: Wednesday (4/1), start of class.

Due Dates for Various Parts of the Midsemester Project

Those of you who were in class today (Monday) got back your thesis statement exercises from the Friday before spring break, your annotated poems, and your short analysis papers. As I discussed in class, everyone has the option of revising everything (in fact, I haven't calibrated the points on the various assignments to any grading scale, on the assumption that everyone will be revising everything anyway). Since your 6- to 8-page papers are due on Monday, there was some anxiety about when the revisions of the bibliographies, annotated poems, and shorter papers would be due. The syllabus says "complete midsemester project due" on Monday (4/6), but I gather that most people would prefer not to divide their attention between revising old assignments and completing the longer paper.

What I suggested in class is that each of you contact me individually to let me know when you want to hand in the revisions. If your longer paper relies little on secondary sources or the poem you annotated, you may prefer to wait until after the Monday deadline to hand in the revisions; on the other hand, if your longer paper builds heavily on the work in your other assignments, you might prefer to complete those revisions before you do the longer paper. Look at what you've got, look at your schedule for this week and next, and then let me know what you would prefer to do. I would rather not accept any work for the midsemester project after 4/10 (there is a third assignment coming up...)--but within that framework, I'm happy to work with whatever arrangement will allow you to hand in your best work.

For Credit: Martha Milcah Moore's Book

For Wednesday, I've asked you to read the Preface and the Blecki introduction to this book, and then to browse the Table of Contents and pick a couple of poems to read for class tomorrow.

Which poems drew your attention? What particular features of this book are you interested in exploring in greater depth? What surprises or perplexes you about it?

Reflect here.

Deadline: Friday (3/20), noon.

A possibly good source that I can't use, but maybe you can!

So, on my journey, trying to sort through the various results I found, I came upon Elegy as political expression in women's poetry: Akhmatova, Levertov, Forche. Granted it does not cover the time period or the poets we are studying, but there may be some good ideas that could be applicable.

Hope this helps!

Reading for Friday: Smith, "Verses on the Death of the Same Lady"

Here is the poem that Gabriel will be teaching in class on Friday.

Epitaph on a Favorite Tame Chicken

Although I did not choose to present the Epitaph on the chicken in class, I did not want to deprive everyone from enjoying the poem. What if any aspects of this poem do you find similar to "The Choice"? Would this poem fall within the classification of an elegy as defined by Backscheider? Any other thoughts on the death of the chicken?

BENEATh this stone a chicken's laid,
Her mistress named her Bess,
Six months she tenderly was nursed,
Yes still she grew the less.

In fairy hill poor Bess was hatched,
If there she had but staid,
She might have had a verdant grave,
And not in dust been laid.

But hapless chick, like this world's fools,
Must wander far from home,
And by a lady's scissars fell,
And here must fix her tomb.

Farewell! my little favourite Bess,
Thy fate why should I mourn?
Since kings and queens the fame must share,
And unto dust return.

Reading for Friday: Kelly, "The Choice"

Here is the poem that Emily will be teaching on Wednesday.

For Credit: Where Does this Poetry Analysis Get Us?

Let me first say that I am deeply impressed by the close-reading skills that all of you have been bringing to class and the sophisticated level of engagement and analysis that has been characterizing our discussions. There are a lot of ways that a tiny class on rather off-beat subject matter can go, and I definitely feel like I'm living a best-case scenario. So thank you all! (And by all means, carry on!)

Let's step back for a minute, now that we're about midway through the student-led discussions, and think more broadly about these poems that we've been scrutinizing. So far we've mourned the death of Marie Antoinette, heard some good marital advice, explored the pleasures of cosy room on a stormy night, and considered the implications of a boy's first pair of pants.

What does it all add up to? Are we looking at a bunch of entertaining and diverse poems that happen to have existed within the same hundred-year span and were written by people with vaginas but otherwise have little to connect them? Or do these various works hang together with the other poems you've read in the course in ways that suggest that "C18 Poetry By Women" is a coherent, stable, and analyzable literary field? That may sound like a leading question, but it's not meant to be (I'm not looking for affirmation that the course title makes sense, but I am looking for an active engagement with the question).

Deadline: oh, fairly open-ended under the circumstances, but I did tally up the blog points thus far and some of you need to step up and start posting responses if you do not want your grade dragged down by this requirement.

Reading for Monday: Yearsley, "Elegy on Marie Antoinette"

Here is the poem that Ryan will be teaching the class on Monday.

Reading for Friday: Bannerman, "To the Nightingale"

Here is the poem that Kristen will be teaching on Friday.

More Mary Masters

Hey People-

I thought you might want to read the poem that I kept mentioning during class. Notice the very long title, it seems to be a common trope with Masters. Enjoy!

(Update--if you had trouble opening that link before, it should be working now.)

Reading for Wednesday: Masters, "On a Lady who...died a maid."

Here is the poem that Liz will be teaching the class on Wednesday.