Week 2 of ModPo 2019 begins: Al’s announcement (includes info about the first essay)
Sunday morning here in Philly. The sun is shining and it’s nearly time for me to dig around in my tiny urban garden. But first an overview of ModPo week 2.
During week 2 we encounter a variety of modern and contemporary U.S. poets who are responding to the pre-modern poetic modes of Whitman and Dickinson. We want to follow Whitman through to the Beat poets and beyond. We also want to follow Emily Dickinson’s powerful legacy through early modernism, into the 1930s, to the postwar scene, to several important contemporary poets who have returned to Dickinson and emphasize how remarkably experimental she was at the level of the line and phrase and figuration and word choice.
Kate Colby at the Kelly Writers House
The main ModPo syllabus (click “Overview” in the left-side menu) presents a small sampling of the two modes: Williams and Ginsberg on the Walt Whitman side, Niedecker and Corman and Armantrout on the Emily Dickinson side.
The week 2 syllabus in ModPoPLUS (our extra parallel syllabus of poems and videos) includes a large sampling of these poets. One of them, Kate Colby, who is presented in ModPo as a “Dickinsonian” but is much more than that, of course, will actually be visiting us on Wednesday this week. Kate will be joining us as a special guest at our live webcast starting at noon. Join Kate and us! Below are links to Kate’s poems and our videos about Kate’s poems as seen in ModPoPLUS.
This is also the week when some ModPo’ers will be writing and posting essays in response to the prompt in essay assignment #1. For essay #1 in ModPo 2019, we have selected a new Dickinson poem and ask you to write a 500-word close reading of that poem. (I say “new” and mean: this is not a poem we have discussed previously in ModPo. It is a famous poem: “This is my letter to the World.”)
Why will some people write essay #1? Some will write and post the essay because they intend to earn and receive a ModPo certificate (writing the four essays is among the requirements for earning the certificate—to see these requirements, click here). Some will write the essay because they want to try their hand at doing a close reading without the aid of a ModPo video in which I and the TAs present such a reading. Whatever your reasons for doing so, we invite you to write and post such an essay!
Click “Resources” in the left-side menu. Then click “essay assignments.” (Do not click “Grades.” This link is not relevant to ModPo and is likely to provide confusing information.) Or go directly HERE.
So during week 2 people will be posting their essays HERE. During week 3 we will be reading and writing reviews/comments/responses to the posted essays.
If you decide to write and post an essay during ModPo’s 10-week symposium-mode run through the syllabus (September through November each year) we will guarantee that you will receive AT LEAST FOUR comments in response. How about that for a responsive MOOC?! ModPo’s creed: a massive open online course need not be impersonal.
Happy week 2-ing to all!
Feelin’ like a happy genius of my household,
—Al
PART ELEVEN: KATE COLBY
11.1 read Kate Colby’s “Middleman”: LINK TO TEXT
11.2 watch discussion of Kate Colby’s “Middleman”: LINK TO VIDEO
11.3 read Kate Colby’s “Theory”: LINK TO TEXT
11.4 watch discussion of Kate Colby’s “Theory”: LINK TO VIDEO [OFFSITE COPY]
Q: Will we get certificates upon completion of this course?
A: Yes, we will present non-credit Statements of Completion to those who complete the course and fulfill all the requirements for such a certification. Such statements are only given out during the annual September-through-November special “live” running of the course—the annual period we call the ModPo Symposium. ModPo will be open all year and we do encourage participants to take the course any time of the year, and indeed to complete assignments, including the essays, any time. But, again, we are only able to award the ModPo Statement of Completion during the 10-week “symposium”-style “synchronous” gathering—the ModPo Symposium—which in 2018 ends on November 18, 2019.
So what are the required assignments? You will receive a Statement of Completion if during the ModPo Symposium you:
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write the four essays;
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write at least four peer reviews during each of the four peer review periods, for a total of at least 16;
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take all the quizzes and receive a score higher than 0.0 on each one of them; and
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participate in our discussions by posting a comment at least once each week to any of the poem-specific forums set up for that week.
Further on this fourth requirement: each week’s forum will include subforums for the poems assigned for that week. Students seeking a Statement of Completion should post at least once per week, to any of these subforums (you’re welcome to post to all of them, of course). ModPo will be open all year but only those who complete the work described above during the September-to-November Symposium will be eligible for the ModPo Statement of Completion. We do not charge a fee for ModPo; our certificate is created and distributed by us at the University of Pennsylvania rather than by our colleagues at Coursera. Once the ten-week Symposium period is completed, we will be in touch about the process and timing of awarding the Statements. If you have questions about this, please post them in the discussion forum.
