• This course will address American poetry and culture from 1945 to 1970. In addition to becoming more skillful readers of poetry, students will develop a more detailed understanding of shifts in American verse amidst larger cultural, political, and historical trajectories. Central themes in our analysis of post-war poetry will include the roles of poetic form, visual art, gender, race, academic institutions, and confessional strategies. In addition, this course will shed light on the creative practices of the poets we will read and the poetic and intellectual circles in which they moved. We will read such poets as Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Theodore Roethke, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Hayden. The course includes discussions, presentations, essays, and quizzes.

Texts:
• Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2008) ISBN: 0061558893
• Robert Lowell, Life Studies and For the Union Dead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) ISBN: 0374530963
• Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2006) ISBN: 0060882964
• Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems (Mariner Books, 1999) ISBN: 0395957761
• Robert Hayden, Collected Poems (Liveright Publishing Company, 2007) ISBN: 0871401592
• Course packet available at the Ave Copy Center