Art of Poetry

Catalog description

Students who have previously found poetry mystifying and thorny will learn how to unlock, unpack,and make sense of a broad range of traditional and modern poems in English by authors such as Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Keats, Browning, Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy, Hopkins, Yeats, Frost, Stevens, Williams, Pound, Moore, Eliot, and Crane. Students who already like and understand some poems will expand their range and their skills as interpreters. All students will gain confidence through attentive reading, with respect for the text as written and an eye to the interrelationships of voice, style, form, content, and purpose. By writing clear, concise, well organized, well-specified, and interesting interpretive essays, they will learn to think more analytically and critically. Brief lectures will punctuate guided Socratic discussions intended to stimulate genuine thoughtfulness about the means and ends of specific poems. Prerequisite(s): BUS 1010 or FYWR 1020 .