Spring 2009 Courses

English 135-02: Introduction to Poetry (Krier)

TBA

How do poems work, and what sorts of uses do they have for readers and cultures? In this course we'll address both questions, reading many poems from many centuries and many places, so that by the end of the semester you'll be able to make your way around a poem, taking pleasure in poems from far as well as near and taking pleasure in poems difficult as well as simple, very new and very old. Sometimes we'll focus on matters of craft and technique (figurative language, meters from pentameter to free verse to those antic Skeltonics, speakers, stanzas and lines, narrative); sometimes on forms and their histories (sonnets, odes, spirituals); sometimes on thematic kinds (dream poems, poems of nature), sometimes on the roles that poetry can play in different cultures and in our own. This course is for people who already love poetry and are ready to go further into it; for people who are curious about how it comes about; for people who have sidled up to it, wondering if it might be for them; for people who want to begin or grow their sense of pleasure and intimacy with a living, changing art. There will be a mid-term test and a final, and 3 writing assignments, taking you through skills in writing about poetry: precise description of poetic techniques and effects; comparative analysis of poems' language and social gestures; argumentation about some controversial aspect of a poet or poem (respective minimum lengths: 1200 words, 1200 words, 2400 words). We'll use the fifth edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry, shorter edition. There are no prerequisites for this course. Non-majors are welcome. This course does fulfill the gateway requirement for English majors, and it fulfills the College's writing ("W") requirement.