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Description
The ECU Catalog's bland description of this
course consists of a single sentence fragment: "Variety of voices
that comprise poetry written in English." Let's be a bit more specific:
we'll be studying one of the richest periods (perhaps the richest)
of poetic development and innovation in all of British and American literary
history. We'll start with Whitman and Dickinson just to get our ears tuned,
and then move to the 20th century; among the modern poets we'll read are
the usual suspects, listed here in order of birth: William
Butler Yeats, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, H.D., Robinson Jeffers,
T.S. Eliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, e.e. cummings, Jean Toomer, W.H. Auden, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop,
Dylan Thomas, Ann Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Seamus Heaney, etc. As we move
closer to postmodern and contemporary poetry, we'll find more poems by
women and minorities, and we'll take a quick tour of work by the Beats,
the Confessional School poets, the Neo-formalists, and a number of emerging
poets. Twentieth century poetry is (to use a worn out but accurate phrase)
an embarrassment of riches, and we'll have to read several hundred poems
just to scratch the surface. With only 14 weeks in the semester, we'll
be moving fast. This is not a good class for slackers. It's a great class
for folks who love poetry, who are excited by le mot juste and the way
metaphors can change your brain, who are practiced and careful readers,
and who, as Nabokov said of good readers, "caress the details."
Responsibilities
Attendance is required.
Three short (3-5 pp) critical essays
One term paper focusing on a particular poet (10-15 pp)
Oral reports on poets
Other such stuff as the professor may devise
Texts are TBA.
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