ENGLISH 62N: Eros in Modern American Poetry (Stanford Introductory Seminar) Taught by: Ken Fields Fall Quarter, 2009-2010 TTh 3:15-4:45, Room: 160-319 | This course will introduce ways of discussing and writing about varieties of modern and contemporary poetry. We will look at poems in traditional measures as well as several kinds of free verse to determine whether the languages of poetry explore ranges of experience-intellectual and emotional-not found in other forms of writing. We will discuss the paradoxical ways in which some writers, in the interest of contemporaneity, have made use of poetry from the past and from other cultures: Chinese, Japanese, Native American, Greek, and Latin. Also, we will look at the treatment of California history and politics, especially local history, in some of these poems. Among the poets we will read are William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Yvor Winters, Janet Lewis, Louise Bogan, Theodore Roethke, N. Scott Momaday, Guy Davenport, Lucille Clifton, and the haiku masters Basho, Buson, and Issa. Central to the course will be <Eros the Bittersweet,> a book in which the poet and classicist Anne Carson reads Sappho, the great Greek love poet, in light of Plato, and argues for a relationship between the incursions of Eros and the contemplation of knowledge. We will do close readings of a manageable number of short poems. Students will participate in class discussions and write brief papers each week, leading to a more comprehensive project at the end of the quarter. This course fulfills the following Major Requirements:
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