Modern and Contemporary Poetry

Catalog description

The content of this course is variable. Study of poetry written from the end of the nineteenth century up to the present day, potentially including poetry in translation from several cultures and places. A. Modern and Contemporary British Poetry Study of twentieth- and twenty-first century poetry and poetry movements in the British Isles. B. Modern and Contemporary North American Poetry Study of twentieth- and twenty-first century poetry and poetry movements of North America. For example: Prof. S. McCaffery, 20th Century Avant-Garde Poetry This course explores the emergence and transformation of primarily twentieth and twenty-first century Anglophone poetics in North America as well as the twentieth-century emergence of the Avant-Garde. Authors and topics covered include Imagism, Vorticism, Feminist Poetics and Poetry, Italian and Russian Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Objectivism, the Beats, the Harlem Renaissance and Negritude, Projective Verse, the New American Poetry of the 1960s, the New York School and Language Poetry. Alongside texts to be studied, analyzed and compared are relevant theoretical texts largely by poets themselves. For example: Prof. Ming Qian Ma, Poetry and Poetics This course will introduce students to modern and contemporary poetry in the 20th century, with an emphasis on the American poetry. Following a chronological approach, the class will cover the period from the so-called High Modernism to the present, studying the major poetic movements such as Imagism, the Objectivists, the Fugitives, the Confessional School, the New York School, the Harlem Renaissance, the Beat Movement, the Deep Image School, the Language poetry, and others. The overarching topic of our critical inquiry is the poetry-poetics relationship, as it is perceived and practiced by diverse poets in their corresponding socio-political, cultural, and aesthetic contexts. The class will focus on close reading of selected poets representing each poetic movement in conjunction with selected criticisms by these poets.