ENGL 410F W21 Easton

English 230 (041)

Winter 2021

T Th 1:00-1:50 pm

Online (via LEARN and Bongo/Teams)

Instructor: Dr. F. Easton

TA: Ms. M. Shafqat Ali

English Department

University of Waterloo

The Pleasure of Poetry

SYLLABUS

Notes: (1) all course readings (except for handouts and links to webpages) will be from Joseph Kelly, ed., The Seagull Book of Poems, 4th ed. (Norton, 2018); (2) along with the poems listed here we will also consider some student-suggested ones, as appropriate.

January 12 & 14:  Introduction: Experiencing Poetry

                             Atwood, “You Fit into Me”

                             Merwin, “Separation”

(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28891/separation-56d21285b2140)

                             Hughes, “Theme for English B”

                             Collins, “Introduction to Poetry”

I. Poetic Energies

January 19 & 21:  Sounds and Images

                             Anon, “Sing, Sing” (handout)

                             Carroll, “Jabberwocky”

                             Plath, “Daddy”

                             Blake, “The Tyger” (compare the poem in Kelly with an example of Blake’s original at http://blakearchive.org/images/songsie.a.p37-42.100.jpg)

                             Kaur, “i don’t need more friends” (https://www.instagram.com/p/BvkvMjEn4Oc/)

January 26 & 28:  Experiences

                             Wheatley, “On Being Brought from Africa to America”

                             Smith, “not an elegy for Mike Brown”

                             Wroth, “My pain, still smother’d in my grieved breast”

                             Wordsworth, “A slumber did my spirit seal” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45553/a-slumber-did-my-spirit-seal)

                             Whitman, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer”

February 2 & 4:  Feelings

                             Roethke, “Root Cellar”

                             Pound, “In a Station at the Metro”

                             Espada, “Latin Night at the Pawnshop”

                             Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”

                             Cullen, “Yet Do I Marvel”

                             Dickinson, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes--”

                             E. Browning, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”

II. Poetic Crafts

February 9 & 11:  Metaphors

                             Plath, “Metaphors”

                            Shakespeare, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”

                             Blake, “The Sick Rose” (compare the poem in Kelly with an example of Blake’s original at http://blakearchive.org/images/songsie.a.p48-39.100.jpg)

                             Dickinson, “My Life had Stood—A Loaded Gun--” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52737/my-life-had-stood-a-loaded-gun-764)

February 16 & 18:  Reading Week--no classes

February 23 & 25:  Rhythms

                             Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California”

                             Forche, “The Colonel”

                            Hughes, “Harlem”

                             Dylan, “The Times They Are A-Changin’”

                             Brooks, “We Real Cool”

                             Shakespeare, “That time of year thou mayst in me behold”

March 2 & 4:  Audiences

                             Lowell, “For the Union Dead”

                             Hayes, “Talk”

                             Houseman, “To an Athlete Dying Young”

                             Donne, “Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you”

                             Stevenson, “The Victory”

March 9 & 11:  Forms

                             Spencer, “One day I wrote her name upon the strand”

                             Bishop, “Sonnet”

                             Collins, “Sonnet”

                             Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow”

                             cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s”                   

III. Poetic Gifts

March 16: Pause--no classes

March 18:  Surprises

                             Frost, “Design”

                             Olds, “Sex without Love”

March 23 & 25:  Stories

                             Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”

                             R. Browning, “My Last Duchess”

                             Hardy, “Channel Firing”

                             Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

                             Dickinson, “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died--”

                             Bishop, “The Fish”                           

March 30 and April 1:  Judgements

                             Ellis, “Or,”

                             Wordsworth, “The World is Too Much with Us”

                             Auden, “Musee des Beaux Arts”

                             Wheatley, “To Maecenas” (https://www.bartleby.com/150/1.html)

April 6 & 8:  Amusements

                             cummings, “anyone lived in a pretty how town”

                             Plath, “Morning Song” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49008/morning-song-56d22ab4a0cee)

                             Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

April 13:  Make up class (if necessary)