Modern American Poetry, 1910-1950

Catalog description

The first half of the 20th century saw an unprecedented wave of poetic innovation, much of it produced by American poets living both in the United States and abroad. This course will explore crucial texts and movements that range widely in their aesthetic and formal orientations, but that share in the expansive and experimental spirit of modernism. We'll consider key volumes by Robert Frost, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, and Langston Hughes, as well as major poetic sequences produced in the shadow of World War II. We'll also attend to varying modes of poetic circulation, including periodicals, small presses, and radio. Our primary focus will be on individual poems and their powers to illuminate our lives.