English 281p. Poetry and Poetics (Lyric and Its Discontents)

Instructor: Stephanie Burt
Tuesday, 12:45-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

What is poetry? What is lyric? Who cares, and why? How have the answers to those questions changed since people began writing verse in English? We will focus-- though not exclusively!-- on modern and contemporary answers to those questions as we read, together,  poets, critics and thinkers who have posed them, from Samuel Johnson to Langston Hughes to Allen Grossman, Timothy Yu or Anna Jackson, and major poems that propose or imply their own answers. Students are encouraged to bring to the seminar the poets and poems that they themselves want to study, not only canonical gems (Hughes, Moore, Tennyson) but major figures from outside the U.S. and U.K.

Space permitting, this course is open to qualified undergraduates. Undergraduates, please contact Prof. Burt before classes begin if you would like to take the course.