AMST 4030

Poetry in Process

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

A close study of three major 20th century poets (Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore) who together developed a distinctly American strain of modern poetry, one focused on the pleasures and perplexities of thought, feeling, and sensory perception.  Their poems draw on everyday phenomena from weather to wheelbarrows, housecats to desert rats, finding in them sources of philosophical insight, moral instruction, and aesthetic joy.  All three poets admired and learned from one another's work, and we'll trace lines of mutual influence and dialogue while charting the internal trajectories of their long and prolific careers.  Our primary focus will be on their best poems, which in their subtle craft and thematic depth reward the closest possible reading.  Some attention will also be given to the uses of biographical context in literary interpretation.

When Offered Spring.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)
Course Subfield (LT)

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