English 166 - Spring, 2011

Love & Desire in Contemporary American Poetry

Class Information

Instructor: Freeman, Elizabeth
CRN: 53195
Time: MWF 1:10-2:00
Location: 26 Wellman

Description

This class will explore how American poets from World War II to the present have written about emotion, sexuality, and social form. After a crash course in poetics, we will begin by exploring some traditional forms for the love poem and how contemporary American poets have engaged with them—earnestly, ironically, experimentally, etc. In the second part of the course, we will think a bit more theoretically about desire, and the question of how desire and literary form meet one another. Does desire seek form, seek to destroy it, or something else? Can poetry “express” desire, or must it somehow “perform” desire? We will explore as many forms of love and desire as possible – gay and straight, object-oriented and otherwise. While a background in poetry is helpful, it is not required or assumed.

Texts

Great Love Poems , Weller, Shane, ed.
Poetic Designs: An Introduction to Meters, Verse Forms, and Figures of Speech, Adams, Stephen
The Best American Erotic Poems , Lehman, David, ed.
Course reader TBA