English Department Course Descriptions Winter 2007/2008

ENG 17-1 Modern Poetry
Simon Van Booy
This course will take up the work of several English-language poets in the first half of the twentieth century, including T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Robinson Jeffers, and Marianne Moore.

Each of these poets is difficult in his or her own particular way and, in fact, we could think of the Modernist period as a great flourishing of idiosyncrasy and difficulty. A large part of our work in this course will be finding our way into these difficult minds. We will also, however, be concerned with what these iconoclasts have in common, and what it meant (or means) to be modern. Work for the course will consist of several brief take-home writing assignments, a mid-term exam, and a longer final exam.
On Occasion, 3 credits