8G:7 Poetry (Humanities)

As poet Marianne Moore confesses of her own craft, “I, too, dislike it”—a sentiment not uncommon even among avid readers. Whatever our own attitudes toward poetry, this course will give you the tools to better understand, experience, and evaluate the genre, from the most rhythmically-taut heroic couplet to the most visually-expansive free verse poem. By exploring form, rhythm, meter, sound, and other poetic devices through the work of poets both old and new, we will come to recognize, in W. B. Yeats’ words, the “stitching and unstitching” that goes into poetry’s creation. What’s more, by reading a wide variety of poets, you will hopefully discover a handful that speak particularly to you and leave the class equipped to further explore and enjoy the genre on your own.

Specific Course Description and texts used in recent versions of this course

Texts that have been used in recent years for this course. (This is a comprehensive list. During any particular semester, only a few of these texts or similar ones will be used for a specific section of 8G:7)

Primary Texts:

• Preminger and Brogan, Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton Univ. Press) (can be used as a reference text)
  
• Fussell, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form (McGraw-Hill)
  
• DiYanni and Rompf, McGraw-Hill Book of Poetry (McGraw-Hill)
  
• Nims and Mason, Western Wind (McGraw-Hill)
  
• Ferguson, Norton Anthology of Poetry (Norton)
  
• Perrine, Sound and Sense (Harcourt Brace)
  
• Rosenthal, Poetry in English: An Anthology (Oxford Univ. Press)

Suggested Texts:

(Intended as supplements to a recommended text, principally for the purpose of highlighting a particular historical period or genre.)

Historical Period:

• Auden and Pearson, The Portable Romantic Poets (Penguin)
• Armstrong and Bristow, Nineteenth Century Women Poets (Oxford Univ. Press)
• Barnstone and Barnstone, A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now (Schocken / Random House)
• Mandelbaum and Richardson, Three Centuries of American Poetry (Bantam)
• McGann, The New Oxford Book of Romantic Period Verse (Oxford Univ. Press)
• Poole and Maule, The Oxford Book of Classical Verse (Oxford Univ. Press)
• Woudhysen, The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659 (Penguin)

Post-World War II:

• Allen, The New American Poetry 1945-1960 (Univ. of California Press)
• Astley, New Blood (Bloodaxe Books)
• Bosselaar, Outsiders: Poems About Rebels, Exiles, and Renegades (Milkweed / Publishers Group West)
  
• Collier, The New American Poets (Middlebury College Press)
  
• Collier and Phemly, The New Bread Loaf Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (Middlebury College Press)
  
• McClatchy, The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry (Random House)
  Genre:
  
• Fuller, The Oxford Book of Sonnets (Oxford Univ. Press)
  
• Johnson, The Best of the Prose Poem: An International Journal (White Pine Press)
  

Author-oriented:

• Conarroe, Six American Poets: An Anthology (Random House) (Includes Dickinson, Frost, Whitman, Stevens, Hughes, Williams.)
  
• Conarroe, Eight American Poets: An Anthology (Random House) (Includes Bishop, Merrill, Plath, Ginsberg, Roethke, Berryman, Sexton, Lowell.)
  

African American:

• Harper and Walton, The Vintage Book of African American Poetry (Random House)