Tuesday, July 20, 2010

course texts

Yeah, the memo said book orders were due June 19th; and yeah, I got mine in yesterday (July 19). So sue me. I could present my orders a year in advance to the campus bookstore at Our Fair University & they'd still get something wrong, or be unable to find some small-press thing.

In case you're wondering (I know that throngs have been on the edges of their seats awaiting this information), here's what I'm teaching from:

In the undergraduate Milton course (as I've discussed before), I'll be using the newish Modern Library edition of The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose, ed. William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, & Stephen M. Fallon.

(Which reminds me – I was conversing earlier this evening with an old friend of J.'s, currently house guest here by the ocean, about the 19th-c. American novel course I did last Fall, & I remarked that every book on the syllabus, Hawthorne Melville Alcott Stowe James Twain & Chopin – with the partial exceptions of Chopin & Twain [Connecticut Yankee, it was] – was written in something I call "19th-century novelese." You know, complex sentence constructions, big unfamiliar words, a bit of stylistic stilt-standing, etc. And most of my students had a pretty damned hard time with it. And then I thought, Jumpin' Jesus on a Pogo Stick!, I'm teaching Milton's controversial prose this Fall. What kind of a bloody masochist am I, anyway?)

In my graduate poetry workshop, we'll be spending time with the following:
•Louis Zukofsky, Selected Poems (yes, I know, New Directions will be shortly releasing new [corrected!] editions of Complete Short Poetry and "A" – but for the nonce, this is all that's in print)

•Lorine Niedecker, The Granite Pail: The Selected Poems

•Martin Corless-Smith, Swallows

•Eric Baus, The To Sound

•Janet Holmes, The Ms of M Y Kin

•Brenda Iijima, If Not Metamorphic

•Lisa Robertson, Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip

•Liz Waldner, Trust
A rollicking good time will be had by all. Really.

7 comments:

tyrone said...

glad you're doing Liz's and Brenda's books--they deserve wider recognition (ditto for Janet's work)...

tyrone

p.s.--the campus "book"store--don't get me started...

Jonathan Morse said...

Flash: I respect Milton more than I respect Glenn Beck.

http://jonathan-morse.blogspot.com/2010/07/words-not-seen-tears-not-shed.html

Ed Baker said...

I "cut my teeth" on/in that Modern Library edition of

The Complete Novels and Selected Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne

1223 pages...

the introduction is/was by Norman Holmes Pearson

copyright, 1938!


after Hawthorn I moved into Wieland or The Transformation
(James Brockden Brown who wrote this novel in 1798!!!

a passage:

"My heart was the seat of growing disquietudes. This change in one who had formerly been characterized by all the exuberances of soul could not fail to be remarked by my friends. My brother was always a pattern of solemnity. My sister was clay, moulded by the circumstances in which she happened to be placed. There was but one whose department remains to be described as being of importance to our happiness. Had Plyel likewise dismissed his vivacity?"

so, which of these words stump your students? You must be teaching not logs but, rather, the BUMPS on the logs!

you might be better of
going through Brown to Hawthorne to Poe to Hemingway
than suffering them Kiddies through Milton and LZ ?

Dorothy E Gastman said...

I am Louis Zukofsky's great neice. My grandmother, Dora Zukofsky Pruss, was Uncle Louie's sister. She died a month after giving birth to my father, Moe Ephraim Pruss, on July 26, 1913. Today is the 97th anniversary of his birth.

My father lived with his maternal grandparents, Chana and Pinchus Zukofsky, and Louis, until the age of 13. Grandpa Pinchus named me in the synagogue after I was adopted in 1949.

I haven't read your biography, but so far it seems that Louis, Celia and Paul lived in isolation from their relatives. I do remember going to Paul's debut at a young age at Carnegie Hall.

I have several signed books and a handwritten poem written in honor of my adoptive parents' wedding, October 21, 1939. I also have family photo albums going back 100 years.

I am not interested in selling these items. I would like to know their value for insurance purposes.

My email is degmustluvdogs@yahoo.com. It is my preferred means of communication because I became legally Deaf as an adult.


Dorothy E. Gastman

PS I am a retired English teacher high school.

Trade Waste said...

Great Post. It's interesting and helpful. Thanks

Epaphroditus Bainton said...

Hey - I'm really enjoying yr blog, and seeing someone else that follows up on the leads from Davenport, Ruskin, Joyce, & (perhaps rarest of all) Zukofsky.

HOWEVER! I'm looking for good editions of Ruskin. Do you have any advice on the best ways to get at this material (especially Fors Clavigera)? There's the reprints-on-demand on Amazon, but I'm wary of forking out 35-50 bucks for what might be a cheesy reprint. Thank you very much, and keep up the awesome work! I look forward to the biography!

Daniel said...

Great post.....