Poets & Poetic Voice
Deborah Burnham profile
R 6:30-9:10
This course will explore the development of voice in seven major poets whose careers show particularly interesting patterns of growth and change. We will read two British poets, John Keats whose career showed astonishing changes in
barely six years, and William Butler Yeats who formed a national literature as he created a poetry self. Americans will include HD (Hilda Doolittle) who claimed the right to move from women's traditional lyric space into the world of
the epic. Robert Lowell and Theodore Roethke will represent the post-war American experiements with "confessional " poetry, then with the movement of the poetic self out into larger worlds. The careers of James Wright and Adrienne Rich will show their refusal to rely on early successes with formal verse, and their disciplined use of free verse as they construct more inclusive and generous worlds in poetry.
updated 2006-10-05
