Instr: Elder, Ellen
Office: CRT 474; 229-3935
e-mail: eelder@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: MW; 3:30pm - 4:45pm; MER 311
This course is an overview of the poetry that makes up our modern era: we'll begin by revisiting poetry that set the standards of modern verse, such as Dickinson's, Yeats' and Eliot's poems about such universal philosophical questions as immortality, a "Second Coming" and "The Wasteland". Then we'll embark on a thorough examination of modernist, confessional and contemporary poetry, including Crane, Stevens, Plath, Ginsberg, Rich, Komunyakaa, Ashbery, AI, etc., occasionally reading poets from earlier centuries to compare. We'll study poems in a range of voices presenting a wild variety of subjects such as war, sex, hometown, identity (cultural, racial, sexual, political), work, family, love and illness. The sole text is an anthology that includes a CD of live poetry.
