This class will be unusual to the point of peculiarity. I want to assemble a circle of writers interested in reading together about the origins of language. I have no authority in this realm whatsoever; we will have to teach each other. This is a field which was formally closed to speculation by the French Academy and the Royal Society in the nineteenth century, and informally closed to speculation by Noam Chomsky in the latter third of the twentieth. The last ten or fifteen years have seen a resurgence of interest and a flourishing of research and thought. It’s an inherently fascinating thing, of course. How does it relate to poetry? I will make that case, framed in the interrogative, by way of Robert Frost, in the first several weeks of the term. I will tell you some of what I think and suspect; I will frame a set of questions, laid out in the form of a bad map on the back of a napkin: my very provisional sense of directions people might want to take in their own exploratory way. The class will help expand the map, not so much by filling in the white space as by adding more white space. Thereupon the class will scatter, each by the compass of a somewhat different thought. Each member will read, learn interesting things, and bring them back for general delectation. Each presentation (verbal, from notes: no papers) will be coupled with a writing pitch, in the manner to which I and my students over the years have become accustomed. If this is unfamiliar to you, well, you’ll get used to it, and chances are you’ll enjoy it.