This course will explore the forms and values of modern poetry – its ambitions and anxieties, its daring innovations, difficulty, and sheer beauty. In the first half, we’ll trace the emergence of a distinctly modern poetic sensibility and style, from Baudelaire and the French symbolists through the heyday of Anglo-American modernism (Pound and Eliot). The second half is dedicated to the work of W. B. Yeats. Requirements: commit to memory one poem of at least 50 lines (or two shorter poems), participation, midterm, and final examination (more info in class).

Texts: Yeats is required (W. B. Yeats, The Collected Works, Volume I: The Poems, ed. By Finneran); most of the Eliot and Pound poems we’ll look at can be found in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, ed. By Ellmann and online (but T. S. Eliot, Selected Poems, Harvest, and Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, New Directions, are highly recommended).