Modern American Poetry

Modern American Poetry Mary Patroulis IST 616 Final Paper Presentation

IApril is National Poetry Month! So after testing and scrapping plans to analyze some other information retrieval systems (it is with a heavy heart that I leave the AFI Catalog of Feature Films behind), I decided to examine a site I use often: Modern American Poetry--also known as “MAPS.”

MAPS was established in 1999 at the University of Illinois. Influential modern American poetry scholar, Cary Nelson, who edits the Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, founded the site in order “to help all readers of modern poetry, not just readers of the Oxford anthology.” Since its establishment, the site has grown organically and tries “to help draw attention to the many fine critical and historical books written about American poetry.” Nelson also says, “In some cases MAPS is the only source for scholarly commentary on a given poet's work.” Retrieved from http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/about.htm

Richard Powers, MacArthur Fellow, novelist, National Book Award Winner, says: “What makes MAPS unique is its emphasis on collaborative process. MAPS is not a single, didactic edifice that hides its agenda behind a veil of authority. It is a living, breathing conversation between hundreds of poets, scholars, and readers, constantly growing and presented in an eminently clear and usable way. Extraordinary in its depth and breadth, and a one-of-a-kind resource for teaching modern American poetry, MAPS provides a single clearinghouse for some of the best criticism on the best poets of our time.”Retrieved from http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/about.htm-

I decided to google the term “Modern American Poetry,” just to see what came up. I did this several times on different days. MAPS is always the first hit: Retrieved from: http://www.google.com/search?q=modern+american+poetry&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Still, it’s a bit difficult to define this website. (Or is it a peer-reviewed journal?) In a sense, it’s a juried, scholarly guide to Modern American Poetry.The Advisory Board includes some of the biggest names in the business. (Most of them have connections to the U of Illinois. Michael Thurston, for example, finished his Ph.D. at U of I just ahead of my husband.) According to Cary Nelson, “In the course of its first year MAPS evolved into an online journal.” Retrieved from http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/about.htm

CONTENT: The website includes previously published poems and works of scholarship, interviews, essays, new works of scholarship, hyperlinks to external sources, course syllabi, and other material to enrich the study of the poems. It is used by scholars, teachers, and students.

The main page offers just three tabs: “Poets,” “Syllabi,” and “About.” In fact, while the content has grown impressively in the last 12 years, the design of MAPS has scarcely changed since Matt Hurt (then a graduate student) first designed it under Cary Nelson’s instruction. It’s primitive, in a way, but its simplicity is also something of a virtue. The site is very easy to navigate.

Accessing Content Material • The only way to access any specific information related to the poets and their work is through the alphabetically organized Poets list. • There is no index, and there are no search bars or other search tools. • There’s no way to know what’s contained in an entry without clicking on the poet’s name.

Interestingly, the companion text that inspired this site, the Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry, offers more browsing and searching options than MAPS. The Table of Contents is 22 pages long. It’s organized chronologically by author, whereas the website is organized only alphabetically by author. Retrieved from: http://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Modern-American-Poetry-Nelson/dp/0195122712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303867777&sr=8-1

The print anthology also offers two indexes, one of poems titles, and the other of poet names. Retrieved from: http://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Modern-American-Poetry-Nelson/dp/0195122712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303867777&sr=8-1

. On the website, users access information about the poets (and, in some cases, schools of poetry) by clicking on alphabetically organized hyperlinks. The list of poets is structured vertically. Users can either click on a letter on the “alphabet bar,” or they can scroll down the list to click.

There are no search bars or other points of access for the material, and it’s impossible to know just what kinds of material and links will be contained in any one entry. WITHIN each entry, the user finds a wealth of materials, but the records are not indexed. (Some entries include poems, critical essays, historical documents, and even images of written manuscripts. Others have just a bit of biographical information, and maybe a short essay or two. Examples follow.)

Also, the number of poets included is limited to those included in the anthology that first inspired the site. There are no other Modern American poets listed. This is fun for scholars, who often argue about when Modernism begins and ends. (Two of my favorite poets, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, predate most definitions of actual Modernism—but their poetry anticipates modern American poetry. They made modern American poetry possible.)

To demonstrate how MAPS works, I’ve clicked on the entry for Sherman Alexie. I teach Alexie’s fiction, poetry, essays, and films in my American Literature classes, so I’ve accessed this information many times. As you can see, there are hyperlinks to a wealth of resources of interest to scholars, teachers, and students of Alexie’s work. Retrieved from: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/alexie/alexie.htm

Important materials available for studying Sherman Alexie’s poetry? • Full- text critical essays • Full-text poems • Dust jacket images • Historical and contextualizing documents • Biographical information • Bibliographies • Internal and external links to full-text essays, poems, interviews, and other relevant materials (to be fair, some of the links no longer work). I teach Alexie’s poem, “Evolution.” Check out the amazing resources available for helping my students understand this poem:

Alexie’s poem, “Evolution,” so you can see how valuable this site is. • Evolution EVOLUTION by Sherman Alexie Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation right across the border from the liquor store and he stays open 24 hours a day,7 days a week and the Indians come running in with jewelry television sets, a VCR, a full-lenght beaded buckskin outfit it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it all catalogues and filed in a storage room. The Indians pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawn their skeletons, falling endlessly from the skin and when the last Indian has pawned everything but his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks closes up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the old calls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter. • Retrieved from: http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/sherman-alexie/evolution-4/

Here’s a screenshot of (a portion of) one contextualizing essay. It provides cultural, historical background for reading “Evolution.”

This entry on poet Sterling Brown includes a wealth of materials, including a dossier of Farm Security Administration photographs that inform Brown’s poems. (The Library of Congress’s American Memories site is another great database for scholars. The dossier is linked to this amazing resource.) http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brown/brown.htm

A photo from the dossier “Cotton Pickers,” by Ben Shahn October, 1935

An essay on the Sterling Brown poem, “Sharecroppers,” in which the scholar (my husband) uses FSA photographs and other resources to provide a historical and cultural context for reading the poem:

Syllabi: One interesting feature of MAPS is a brief but useful collection of Modern American course syllabi. This allows professors and other instructors to see how others structure their courses.

CONCLUSIONS Strengths: Weaknesses: MAPS has changed very little since its establishment almost 12 years ago. The site is poorly indexed and offers no advanced tools for searching. A scholar looking for photographic representations of share croppers would not intuitively know to look for them under the “Sterling Brown” heading. Content is not cross-referenced. A student who can only recall the name or first line of a poem would be unable to find information about that poem without knowing the author. Many hyperlinks are broken, rendering them useless to the scholar or student. • MAPS offers a unique wealth of resources for students, scholars, and teachers of modern American poetry. • MAPS is user-friendly in that its design is basic, almost primitive. Searching for poet-related information through a simple search and click method is almost primally intuitive. • MAPS offers materials available only on this site, including original works of scholarship, course syllabi, and contextualizing documents. • MAPS is a juried site; the authority of the content is validated by its well-known advisory board.

Bibliography • Alexie, S. (2010, August 18). "Evolution". In Poem Huner. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/sherman-alexie/evolution-4/ • Amazon.com. Anthology-Modern-American-Poetry-Nelson/dp/0195122712/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303869021&sr=8-1 (n.d.). In Amazon.com. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.amazon.com/Anthology-Modern-American-Poetry-Nelson/dp/0195122712/ref • Cary, N., & Brinkman, B. (1999-2011). In Modern American Poetry. Retrieved April 24, 2011, from http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/index.htm • =sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303869021&sr=8-1

Modern American Poetry