Modern British and American Poetry

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Professor Florence Boos

8:125--Fall 2002

The past hundred years have witnessed many innovations in poetic language and form, and subtle recuperations of past traditions in new contexts. We will study fin de siecle, modernist, and late twentieth century poetry of Britain and the United States, noting the changes and developments in styles; the effect of the century’s social upheavals, including two world wars, on its poetry; and the parallels and differences between the two anglophone poetic traditions.

Among the authors to be studied are Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, D. H. Lawrence, Wilfred Owen, Siefried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Edith Sitwell, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Ruth Pitter, Stevie Smith, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Angelina Grimke, Robert Frost, Edgar Lee Masters, William Carlos Williams, e. e. cummings, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Denise Levertov, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gary Snyder, Leslie Marmon Silko, Simon Ortiz, Seamus Heaney, Jacquie Kay, Evan Boland, Liz Lochhead, Grace Nichol, Jean Binta-Breeze, and Cathy Song.

Attendance is required. Students will be asked to contribute to class discussion, post 10 short journal assignments on the class web page, and submit two six-page essays on topics we have studied.