ENG 354, 355 - Modern Poetry II: 1945-2000

Course unit(s): 1
Meets requirement: W when offered as 355
This course will look closely at some poets who began to publish in the 1950’s and came of age later - after the passing of the generation of heroic modernists, Pound, Williams, Moore, Stevens, HD, Eliot - in the 1960’s and 70’s. Most of the class work will consist of intense discussion and close reading of poems and will tackle such themes as the function of poetry in the contemporary world, public and private language, formalism and “free” verse, poetic voice and its relation to the self, issues of gender, and sexual politics. Poetry will be considered as a special kind of thinking. Poets read might include Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Amiri Baraka, Jay Wright, Philip Levine, and Carolyn Forche. Satisfies departmental Poetry requirement.