In this class, students will learn to analyze poetry across a wide range of genres, styles, and historical periods. Studies in Poetry will also develop students’ critical writing skills, preparing them for upper-division English courses.
This section of Studies in Poetry is organized around significant poetic traditions, from alliterative meter to iambic pentameter to free verse. We ask what it means for a poem to belong to a tradition, how traditions gain momentum, and why they endure or disappear.
units
Why poetry?
Tetrameter and ballad meter (nineteenth century)
Pentameter and the sonnet (fourteenth century to twenty-first century)
Triple meters and the limerick (eighteenth century to twentieth century)
Alliterative meter (tenth century to fourteenth century)
Free verse (nineteenth century to twentieth century)
Contemporary American poetry and the lyric (late twentieth century to twenty-first century)
- Prageeta Sharma, Grief Sequence (2019)
- Solmaz Sharif, Customs (2022)
- Elizabeth Willis, Alive: New and Selected Poems (2015)
[pictured: LeRoi Jones aka Amiri Baraka]
Eric Weiskott 