Welcome to English 211

Syllabus

Student Profiles

Class Portfolio

Click on the picture for a link

to the Academy of American Poets,

and more information on William Blake

I'll be posting announcements of poetry readings here during the semester. All readings are free unless otherwise noted. Please check the Assignments and Resources sections for additional information and links, as well as the Syllabus section for updates and changes.

             ***You can view all 50 Favorite Poem Project videos at this website:

                  <http://www.bu.edu/favoritepoem/thevideos/index.html>

Thank you all for an enjoyable semester! For those interested in other poetry classes, here's one for Spring 07:

362            MODERN BRITISH POETRY            MWF 10:30                        EVE SORUM
                       
“The words of a dead man/ Are modified in the guts of the living.”
                                                                        W.H. Auden, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”
 
Auden was anxious about what happens to poetry when it enters the minds, hearts, and guts of readers. Yet these lines should also make us pause and consider what happens when poetry (by men and women) enters our guts—something we will do often as we delve into modern British poetry. In this course we will be reading with an eye to what a deep exploration of late-nineteenth and twentieth-century poems can teach us in the 21st century. At the same time, we will contextualize the poetry through an examination of contemporary aesthetic debates. This course will focus on the emergence of and reactions against modern/modernist poetry, and we will push on the terms that make up the title of this course, exploring definitions of “modern,” “British,” and even “poetry.” We will read writers’ and critics’ statements about poetry, as we see how enduring subjects of literature—love, death, war, and the shifting palate of human emotion—are taken up by poets writing during this tumultuous period in British history.  
 
This course is both for poetry addicts and for the poetry-phobic. While we will be reading widely, our discussions most often will center on the close and careful readings of individual poems. Our reading list will include, but is not restricted to, such poets as W.B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy, T.S. Eliot, Mina Loy, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, H.D., W.H. Auden, Stevie Smith, and Dylan Thomas.

12/13--Class poetry reading will be held in the back of the college bookstore, with coffee and cookies. Please invite your friends. Some students from other classes may also read with us.

12/11--Class evaluations and screening of DVD from the Favorite Poem Project.

Final Portfolio: Your final portfolio is due at 4:00 pm on Monday, 12/18.You can leave it in my mailbox in the English Dep't office, 6th floor Wheatley, or in the labeled box above my mailbox. You can also hand it in earlier.

Format:  8-10 poems, no more than one poem on a page, with your name on each page. Final drafts only, please.

               Cover sheet with your name and a list of the titles of your poems.

               Portfolio can be stapled, clipped, put in a folder, etc.--no fancy binders needed.

               Portfolio can be returned by 1) including SASE  2) e-mailing me over the break and finding a time convenient for both of us to be on campus 3) picking it up at the beginning of Spring semester.  

Notes on posting:  Thanks to all who are beginning to post comments on your classmates' work. Remember that this is a public site--your comments should reflect your good judgment and decorum.

12/3--Two of you have completed posting the three required poems and three responses. Six of you haven't posted at all. Please be sure to fulfill this class requirement in the next 2 weeks!

Those who missed the screening of "A Life Together" 11/22 can read transcripts of interviews with Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon in Bill Moyers' book The Language Of Life , available at your local library.

Wednesday, 11/8--Click on"Resources" on the left side of the home page, then scroll down to read Philip Larkin's "Aubade," the poem I mentioned in class today. I've also posted a review of a new book by poet Miller Williams on writing poetry (he's the father of singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams), and an article by Robert Pinsky on rhyme.

For a link to Major Jackson's blog, go to http://www.poetryfoundation.org/dispatches/journals/

Poems by Judith Harris, Jeffrey Harrison and Robin Becker have moved to "Resources.                                                   

BOSTON AND BEYOND--N. E. AREA POETRY READING

Saturday, December 16, 2pm

Rosanna Warren and Martha Collins

Brockton Public Library

304 Main St.

Brockton