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Modern American Poetry

ENGL 016.301
instructor(s):
MW 3:30-5:00 pm

This course will explore innovations in modern American poetry. We will begin with the founding contrast of modern American verse: Walt Whitman, with his open and capacious lines, and Emily Dickinson, with her incisive and sharpened verse. With these poles in mind, we will read a range of poetic voices: modernist instigations, including T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Langston Hughes; midcentury beats and confessions, including Jack Kerouac and Sylvia Plath; radical poets of the movement era; and more recent cultural and experimental turns. Moving through this significant and exciting literary arc, we will read closely and adventurously.

 

Course requirements: active participation and three short papers.

fulfills requirements
Sector 1: Theory and Poetics of the Standard Major
Sector 6: 20th Century Literature of the Standard Major