Respect, Baby

Here are a couple of videos of Aretha Franklin performing “Respect”:

An early (1960s?) performance
A performance from 1990
Live, 1967

We’ll listen to two versions in class, while discussing the text and the idea of “textual instability” in songs and poetry.

In other news, our poetry reading will definitely be happening at the OBF on December 10th from 5:00pm (to 7:00pm?). See you there, everyone!

Poems for Week 12

Hi everyone. Here are the poems and songs you should look at for the coming week.

For Monday:

For Wednesday’s presentation:

The Song

Here’s the song for class.

New Readings Package

Sorry for the delay: I finally got the new reading package done. As I said last time, we’ll be looking at the song “I Don’t Love Anyone” on Monday. We’ll also look at a bilingual poem — one that exists both in an English and a Korean form, translated by the same poet who originally wrote it. (And one of my favorite Korean poets. The poem isn’t my favorite, but it’s appropriate to our class.)

If you haven’t done a presentation yet, have a good look at the poems in this package. I’ll be assigning a few presentations for the next couple of weeks from among them. Everyone else, have a look at see what interests you. I want to give you a chance to choose which poems you’d like to discuss at least some of the time.

Okay, here it is: Poetry Class Reading Package #3

Enjoy!

More Poems to Choose From

Aside from the poems we didn’t discuss in your readings package, here are some more to choose from for your midterm project:

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

How Do I Love Thee? by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

this poem by e.e. cummings

A Day in Bed by Katherine Mansfield

In a Station of the Metro, by Ezra Pound (very short but very, very hard!)
Death Be Not Proud by John Donne

Black Petal by Li-Young Lee

Red Slippers by Amy Lowell

Daffodils by William Wordsworth

A Myth of Devotion by Louise Gluck

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

This untitled poem by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for death by Emily Dickinson

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

A Winter Night by Sara Teasdale

any one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, but choose carefully!

Remember, your written project should basically treat the poem in a way similar to how we treat them during presentations or class discussions: consider their contents, structure, meaning, and so on.
The due date is Wednesday, October 31st, at 6:00pm in my mailbox, which is in room #205, 다솔관. Good luck!

Readings for Weeks 4, 5, and some of Week 6

Here is the readings package for the next few weeks!

Please make sure to read the poems by E.E. Cummings, because the presentation on Thursday after Chuseok will be about one of them.

Roo Borson Stuff

Video with Roo Borson in it, for use in my presentation on Borson. The same file in audio form. And here is the poem she is reading.

Website working…

I’ve heard from some students that this website was not loading over the weekend. I didn’t notice, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t working. Maybe something happened in Hong Kong? The last time I had problems, it was because an underwater cable line was cut in Hong Kong. (That’s where the server for this site is located.)

Anyway, the site seems to be up again now, and working fine. Cross your fingers!

Readings Package, Week 2

I’ll be giving you printouts of this today, but I’m uploading it in case anyone ever needs to print it again. Here’s the Week 2 Readings Pack.

I’ll try remember to upload the song we’re studying here too, later today.

Changed my mind… sort of.

Hi everyone. I said I would upload a file for you to print, but I decided to change my plan. There will be a handout for our next class, and after that we’ll start downloading and printing poems to read. So don’t worry about that.

But PLEASE send me an email with the word POETRY in the subject header. So far only one person has done this!

Thanks…

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