ENGL 355 - Twenty- and Twenty-First Century Poetry

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

The course focuses on Anglophone verse, with emphasis on relations between the first half of the twentieth century and its relations to late-twentieth and early twenty-first century work. Our intensive examination of various formal “modernisms” includes attention to contexts such as internationalism, emigration, visual art, anthropology, eugenics, politics, technology, and literary celebrity. Among the poets we study are Yeats , Owen, H. D., Oppen and Moore; Eliot, Frost, McKay, Williams, Stevens, and Bishop. In the second part of the course we pay particular attention to writers whose identities are underrepresented among these “masters,” but whose work is still in dialogue with them. Women, African-American, non-EuroAmerican forms or allegiances feature prominently, as are rewritings of prosody and myth. Assignments include opportunities for procedural and archival activities, such as recital, examination of material practices, imitation of forms, and redaction.

Jean Kane.

One 2-hour period.

Course Format: CLS