| Course Description | |
|---|---|
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English 230 (041) Winter 2021 T Th 1:00-1:50 pm Online (via LEARN and Bongo/Teams) |
Instructor: Dr. F. Easton TA: Ms. M. Shafqat Ali English Department University of Waterloo |
The Pleasure of Poetry
Syllabus
Notes: (1) all course readings (except for handouts and links to webpages) will be from Joseph Kelly, ed., The Seagull Book of Poems, 4th ed. (Norton, 2018); (2) along with the poems listed here we will also consider some student-suggested ones, as appropriate.
January 12 & 14: Introduction: Experiencing Poetry
Atwood, “You Fit into Me”
Merwin, “Separation”
(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28891/separation-56d21285b2140)
Hughes, “Theme for English B”
Collins, “Introduction to Poetry”
I. Poetic Energies
January 19 & 21: Sounds and Images
Anon, “Sing, Sing” (handout)
Carroll, “Jabberwocky”
Plath, “Daddy”
Blake, “The Tyger” (compare the poem in Kelly with an example of Blake’s original at http://blakearchive.org/images/songsie.a.p37-42.100.jpg)
Kaur, “i don’t need more friends” (https://www.instagram.com/p/BvkvMjEn4Oc/)
January 26 & 28: Experiences
Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America”
Smith, “not an elegy for Mike Brown”
Wroth, “My pain, still smother’d in my grieved breast”
Wordsworth, “A slumber did my spirit seal” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45553/a-slumber-did-my-spirit-seal)
Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”
February 2 & 4: Feelings
Roethke, “Root Cellar”
Pound, “In a Station at the Metro”
Espada, “Latin Night at the Pawnshop”
Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”
Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”
Dickinson, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes--”
E. Browning, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”
II. Poetic Crafts
February 9 & 11: Metaphors
Plath, “Metaphors”
Shakespeare, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”
Blake, “The Sick Rose” (compare the poem in Kelly with an example of Blake’s original at http://blakearchive.org/images/songsie.a.p48-39.100.jpg)
Dickinson, “My Life had Stood—A Loaded Gun--” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52737/my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun-764)
February 16 & 18: Reading Week--no classes
February 23 & 25: Rhythms
Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California”
Forche, “The Colonel”
Hughes, “Harlem”
Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”
Brooks, “We Real Cool”
Shakespeare, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”
March 2 & 4: Audiences
Lowell, “For the Union Dead”
Hayes, “Talk”
Houseman, “To an Athlete Dying Young”
Donne, “Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you”
Stevenson, “The Victory”
March 9 & 11: Forms
Spencer, “One day I wrote her name upon the strand”
Bishop, “Sonnet”
Collins, “Sonnet”
Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”
cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s”
III. Poetic Gifts
March 16: Pause--no classes
March 18: Surprises
Frost, “Design”
Olds, “Sex without Love”
March 23 & 25: Stories
Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
R. Browning, “My Last Duchess”
Hardy, “Channel Firing”
Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
Dickinson, “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died--”
Bishop, “The Fish”
March 30 and April 1: Judgements
Ellis, “Or,”
Wordsworth, “The World is Too Much with Us”
Auden, “Musee des Beaux Arts”
Wheatley, “To Maecenas” (https://www.bartleby.com/150/1.html)
April 6 & 8: Amusements
cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town”
Plath, “Morning Song” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49008/morning-song-56d22ab4a0cee)
Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
April 13: Make up class (if necessary)