Instr: Firer, Susan
Office: CRT 576; 229-6993
e-mail: sfirer@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: MW; 11:00am - 12:15pm; CRT 284
In Whitman's Children we will try to answer the question Lawrence Ferlinghetti asks in "Populist Manifesto": "Where are Whitman's wild children...?" We will study several contemporary writers, looking at ways their works extend, converse with, separate from, and in some cases transform Walt Whitman's literary legacy. For those who haven't been exposed to Whitman's writings before, we'll start with a review of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. We will consider collections by Adrienne Rich, Galway Kinnell, Lucille Clifton, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Charles Bukowski and, of course, Allen Ginsberg. We'll spend the last half of the session looking at a sampling of contemporary writers who are Whitman's literary offspring, including Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, Mary Oliver, Lorca, Neruda, and others.
