A Very Short History of Poetry

1. A Very Short History of Poetry

2. Goals of this Presentation • Be familiar with the names of different periods of poetry and some famous poets • Understand what people have done with poetry at different times in history • Be able to hear what different schools of poetry sound like

3. The Origins of Poetry • Poetry as a technology may predate literacy (but how would we know?) • Greek Epics • Hindu Vedas • Mesoamerican Creation Stories

4. The Ancient Greeks • Gave us the word ‘Poetry’ • poesis: making, creating, drawing out • Argued over value of poetry • Homer • Lots of others

5. The Romans... • Copied the Greeks. • Virgil • Ovid • Horace

6. Medieval European Poetry • 600 AD - 1400 AD • Petrarch • Chaucer • Dante • Considered “fathers of the Renaissance” • Began to recover lost Greek and Roman works and knowledge • People understood themselves as members of groups, not as individuals

7. What Medieval Poetry Sounds Like • Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury. • Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote, • The droghte of March hath perced to the roote • And bathed every veyne in swich licour, • Of which vertu engendred is the flour; • Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth • Inspired hath in every holt and heeth • The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne • Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne, • And smale foweles maken melodye, • That slepen al the nyght with open eye- • So priketh hem Nature in hir corages- • Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages • -Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

8. Renaissance / Early Modern Poetry • 1400-1600 • John Donne • Shakespeare • Edmund Spenser • Sir Phillip Sidney’s Defense of Poesie • Poetry glorifies God • Poetry teaches and delights

9. What Renaissance Poetry Sounds Like • MARK but this flea, and mark in this, • How little that which thou deniest me is ; • It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee, • And in this flea our two bloods mingled be. • Thou know'st that this cannot be said • A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ; • Yet this enjoys before it woo, • And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ; • And this, alas ! is more than we would do. • -John Donne, The Flea

10. Enlightenment Poetry • 1600-1700 • Blake • Milton • Focus on reason, individual as well as religion

12. Romanticism • 1775-1875 • Coleridge • Wordsworth • Keats • Shelley • A reaction against Enlightenment’s rationality • Focus on power of imagination, “Negative Capability”

13. What Romanticism Sounds Like • “Poets are the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present, the words which express what they understand not, the trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire, the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” • -Percy Bysse Shelley, Defense of Poetry

14. Modernism • 1875-1925 • T.S. Eliot • E.E. Cummings • Portrays a broken, fragmented reality • Interested in how the individual creates his or her reality

15. What Modernism Sounds Like • What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow • Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, • You cannot say, or guess, for you know only • A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, • And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, • And the dry stone no sound of water. Only • There is shadow under this red rock, • (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), • And I will show you something different from either • Your shadow at morning striding behind you • Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; • I will show you fear in a handful of dust. • -T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

17. Postmodernism • 1970-Present • Includes Feminism, Postcolonialism, Deconstruction • Attacks meta-narratives • The “reality” portrayed by Modernism is revealed to be largely a White, Male, dominant-culture reality

18. What Postmodernism looks like • Dear Jane Alexander, • I just spoke with a young man from your office, who informed me that I had been chosen to be one of twelve recipients of the National Medal for the Arts at a ceremony at the White House in the fall. I told him at once that I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration. I want to clarify to you what I meant by my refusal. • Anyone familiar with my work from the early Sixties on knows that I believe in art's social presence--as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright. • In my lifetime I have seen the space for the arts opened by movements for social justice, the power of art to break despair. Over the past two decades I have witnessed the increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice in our country. • There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art--in my own case the art of poetry--means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage. The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate. A President cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored. • I know you have been engaged in a serious and disheartening struggle to save government funding for the arts, against those whose fear and suspicion of art is nakedly repressive. In the end, I don't think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist. I could not participate in a ritual which would feel so hypocritical to me. • Sincerely, • Adrienne Rich • cc: President Clinton