ENGLISH 359: AMERICAN POETRY SINCE 1945
Dr. Julia Eichelberger 1:40 TTh Fall 2015 This course meets the “Literature in History” Post-1900 requirement.
It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS In this course we’ll study a wide variety of poets who have sought to create meaning and beauty through their verse.
Poets will include Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, W.S. Merwin, James Tate, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Philip Levine, Adrienne Rich, Louise Gluck, Billy Collins, and others.
You’ll be graded on the following assignments:
• Attendance, homework, and in-class participation • Short exercises focused on individual poems, biographical material, or historical trends • A longer paper that analyzes poetry of your choice, responding to critics and incorporating material about the poet’s life and times • A midterm and a final exam
I’ll use a combination of lecture, discussion, and online materials to teach this course. I’ll offer you three major approaches to interpreting these poems. • We’ll study poems as examples of “Literature in History.” We’ll look at historical and social circumstances occurring when these poems were written, then explore ways the poems reflect and interpret these circumstances • Some historical topics we’ll explore will include changing views of gender and sexuality, the Civil Rights movement, responses to post-WWII prosperity and the Red Scare of the 1950s, protests against American involvement in war, growing concerns for our fragile environment We’ll also use a writer-centered approach:
• We’ll study poems as product of a particular poet’s mind and imagination, learning about a poet’s life and reading numerous poems so as to get a feel for that poet’s style and recurring concerns And we’ll explore individual poems, analyzing the way they’re made, considering what they might mean.
• We’ll study poems as acts of linguistic skill and as texts whose meanings can be contested by interpretations offered by other expert readers • My hope is that through each of these approaches, you’ll find new ways to enjoy and appreciate a larger number of poems and poets than you did before you took this class.
• Whether you love poetry, don’t care much about it, or are even a little bit afraid of it, I look forward to working with you in this course.