English R1A

Book List

Bishop , Elizabeth : Poems ; Burt, Stephanie : Don't Read Poetry ; Chan, Mary Jean: Fleche ; Harris , Will: RENDANG ; Hayes, Terrance : American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin ; O'Hara , Frank: Lunch Poems ; Rosenwasser, David: Writing Analytically, 8th Edition ; Shakespeare, William : Sonnets of William Shakespeare; Whitman , Walt: Leaves of Grass--introduced by Harold Bloom

Description

In this course we will move through and across the history of poetry, focusing on poems and poetry through a set of open categories: Character, Identity, Form, Community and Sound. These open categories will be the lenses through which we interpret a broad swath of poetry in English. We'll also follow along with a few of these categories guided by the work of Stephanie Burt in her introductory text Don't Read Poetry.  Beginning in the 21^st century with the work of poets as distinct as Terrance Hayes, Will Harris and Mary Jean Chan, we will move back and forth in time. From the 21^st to the 16^th century, we’ll end in the Renaissance period with the sonnets of William Shakespeare and Thomas Wyatt.  

This course will teach analytical writing, doing so through a broad variety of in-class and independent writing assignments. We will write three papers as we train our rhetorical skills and develop our ability to make complex arguments in discussion and on paper.