A Partial List of Resources
(thanks to Jeff Gray and Greg Iannarella for getting us started)
War poets in our texts or texts we have access to
Yusef Komunyakaa
“Facing It” pg 985 – Literature Craft & Voice
“From ‘Love in the Time of War’” pg 112 – New American Poetry of Engagement (co-edited by Jeff Gray)
“Grenade” pg 113 – New American Poetry of Engagement
“The Towers” pg 113 – New American Poetry of Engagement
“Heavy Metal Soliloquy” pg 115 – New American Poetry of Engagement
“The Warlord’s Garden” pg 115 – New American Poetry of Engagement
“Surge” pg 116 – New American Poetry of Engagement
“Clouds” pg 117 – New American Poetry of Engagement
Robert Bly
Poetry pg 23-27 in New American Poetry of Engagement
SASSOON (see below)
Wilfred OWEN
“Disabled” pg 725 – Norton Introduction
“Strange Meeting” pg 841 – Norton Introduction
“Dulce et Decorum Est pg 1101 – Norton Introduction, pg 700 – Literature Craft & Voice
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” pg 988 – Literature Craft & Voice
Randall JARRELL
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” pg 812 – Norton Introduction, pg 669 – Literature Craft & Voice
Galway Kinnell
“After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” pg 893 – Literature Craft & Voice, pg 781 – Norton Introduction
“Blackberry Eating” pg 859 – Norton Introduction
“When The Towers Fell” pg 107 – New American Poetry of Engagement
Rudyard Kipling
AE Houseman
“To an Athlete Dying Young” pg 861 – Literature Craft & Voice
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
From “The Charge of the Light Brigade” pg 836 – Norton Introduction
“Ulysses” pg 990 – Norton Introduction
“Tears, Idle Tears” pg 1103 – Norton Introduction
“Crossing the Bar” Online Casebook – Literature Craft & Voice
“Break, Break, Break” Online Casebook – Literature Craft & Voice
“Charge of the Light Brigade” Online Casebook – Literature Craft & Voice
“The Eagle” Online Casebook – Literature Craft & Voice
Other resources:
Poets against the war / edited by Sam Hamill with Sally Anderson and others.
Walsh Library Main Collection – Call No: PN6110.I8 P64 2003
————————————————————-
Literature After 9/11 (collection of essays; see Jeff Gray’s Essay “Precocious Memory” among others): Literature after 9-11
—————————————————–
Poetry by Robert Bly – See Google Book: books.google.com/books?isbn=0393241262
———————————————————
The collected early poems and plays [electronic resource] / Robert Duncan ; edited by Peter Quartermain.
The eBook is available here:
—————————————————
From the Hungarian Revolution : a collection of poems / edited by David Ray.
Walsh Library Main Collection – Call No. PH3441.E3 R3
This shows that libraries nearby have a Siegfried Sassoon collection – http://setonhall.worldcat.org/title/collected-poems-1908-1956/oclc/314874794
Here’s a PDF of Siegfried Sassoon’s poetry: http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/siegfried_sassoon_2004_9.pdf
You could supplement a class on sentimental patriotic poems (Kipling, Houseman, Tennyson) with some photos of monuments; note how public responses—in the form of statuary and plaques—have changed, from the valiant general atop a horse with sword raised—every city in Europe and America has several such—to Maya Lin’s famous non-representational Vietnam war memorial in DC. Add the great St. Gauden’s plaque to the 54th Union regiment on the Boston Common, and read Robert Lowell’s “For the Union Dead” in conjunction. He discusses the statue explicitly. This poem is downloadable anywhere—for which this plaque (Word doc below) is the centerpiece. It’s a brilliant poem that kind of revolutionizes elegy. For a class session, you can download a good deal of background and commentary on the poem. Image of St. Gauden’s Plaque: http://www.gettysburgdaily.com/54th-massachusetts-memorial/
Paintings are also a possibly; consider Picasso’s Guernica.
Trauma Theory
Re: “Freudian criticism”—see writings by Cathy Caruth, Dominick LaCapra, and Linda Belau on trauma theory, which derives from Freud (often via Lacan). Jeff Gray mentions all these in his essay “Precocious Testimony.” Trauma theory—re. what constitutes trauma and how and why we represent disaster—could be a real centerpiece to the course. IN spite of the “theory” aspect, there are clear passages in some of this writing.