U.S. Poetry 1890-1940. Accounts of U.S. poetry between Whitman's death and World War II have tended to be dominated by close, extended analysis of a handful of canonical modernist writers. Although we will be reading the likes of Crane, Eliot, H.D., Hughes, Moore, Pound, and Williams in this course, the emphasis will be more broadly historical and thematic, in
order better to introduce students to poetry in an era when the nature, purpose, value, and interpretation of the art form was profoundly contested. Some topics will tilt toward the formal--vers libre, Whitman's long line, parataxis, montage, nonnormative syntax--while others will tend toward the social--warfare, sentimentalism, Francophilia, chinoiserie, propaganda, technological innovation, "renaissances," engineer-idolatry. Be prepared to read verse high- and lowbrow, turgid as well as glorious.
Along the way, we will be grappling with recent, radical remappings of the period by such scholars as Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Alan Filreis, Cary Nelson, Michael North, and Marjorie Perloff.