Class meets:
Monday and Wednesday
12:30-1:45
Field House 1250
Course Description:
English 2730 will be conducted as a reading workshop. “The reading
workshop is concerned with … finding ways to intensify the experience
of the poetic, through a consideration of how . . . . poetry can affect the way we see and understand the world. No previous experience with poetry is necessary. More important is a willingness to consider the implausible, to try out alternative ways of thinking, to listen to the way language sounds before trying to figure out what it means, to hear how poems work to delight, inform, redress, lament, extol, oppose, renew, rhapsodize, imagine, foment ...”
– Charles Bernstein
Prerequisites: Love of literature, curiosity, humor, persistence, a sense of adventure.
Please be forewarned: good literature concerns itself with adult themes : love, sex, politics, race, religion, war, death.
Click here to read the "student learning outcomes" for the course.
Classes: Classes will be conducted much like a seminar as possible. This means short instructor lectures, individual and group work, but it also means class discussion. All are integral to the course and to your learning. Class members should take serious responsibility for the classes; this means coming to class prepared and ready to participate. Ready to participate means that you have the poems assigned in front of you, and
that you have read them and made notes, and have something to ask or say about the assignment.
Attendance and participation are required. Both will be taken into account in the evaluation of the final grade. You should expect that more than three absences will lower your grade. If there is some reason that you can't attend class, please let me know in advance. A brief voice or email message will keep the lines of communication open. You can read the University's attendance policy here.
Books: (available from the campus bookstore).
Poetry: A Pocket Anthology, ed. R. S. Gwynn, 7th edition. Longman, 2011. ISBN: 9780205101986
Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow by Ted Hughes. Faber & Faber, 1974. 978-0571099153
Additional required poems and other reading will be available on this website.
Make good use of a dictionary: this link is to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Click here for a list of poetic themes
Syllabus: This website is the syllabus for the course. Click here for a .pdf version
