FRSEMR 62I. Experiencing Poetry: Love, War, Nature, and Religion in Four Major Twentieth Century Poets

Instructor: Neil Rudenstine
Tuesdays, 12:00-2:00 pm | Location: Sever 111

In our seminar, we will read four major twentieth century poets—from some of their early work to their latest. The hope will be to see how each poet developed during the course of his or her career. How did their styles and their deepest concerns alter over the course of a lifetime? We will run the seminar as a lively discussion group, and will read the poems in some detail, trying to understand their tones, structures, and cadences—reading them aloud as well as silently. In the work of W.B. Yeats, we will see major changes in his conception of love, as well as his views of Irish nationalism and the Irish revolution. Meanwhile, in T.S. Eliot, we find a narrator whose essential quest is spiritual, beginning with Prufrock and then The Wasteland (to which we will devote two weeks). Elizabeth Bishop introduces a highly original voice that expresses personal emotions obliquely and, in effect, “objectively” through understated descriptions of events and places. Finally, W.H. Auden’s trajectory shows an early (1930s) portrayal of human nature and society that is in certain respects similar to Eliot’s but that ends very differently, suggesting values and ways of life that are much less foreboding. In the seminar’s first week, we will read and analyze a small group of lyrics by a few writers (none of whom will be identified by name or exact time period). This will be an exercise in “close reading” intended to help us judge poetic quality, because some of the lyrics will be excellent—and some quite dismal! The week is meant to be enjoyable, and our discussion should be fun and perhaps hilarious. There will be four essays due—one on each poet—during the course of the term, about 7–8 pages each.