IMF 51737 Poetry: Movements in American Poetry L

Instructor

Gene Pfeiffer

Class Type

Literature & Craft (Mini-Workshop in final week)

Course Description

Literary movements help us keep track and study literature by dividing it into categories of similar philosophical, thematic, or aesthetic features. For our purposes, we will use these movements as a guide to study the poetics of some great American poets who are still informing the work of poets writing today. In this course, we'll survey major movements of American poetry of the 1960s, a time of increased social consciousness and critique. We'll explore the Confessional poets, the Beats, the Black Arts Movement, and Black Mountain. We'll read seminal works by poets of these movements including Anne Sexton, Frank O'Hara, Etheridge Knight, Hilda Morley, and Gary Snyder. For formal contrast, will also leap ahead a couple of decades to the New Formalists (focusing on contemporary sonnets). The course will include craft exercises in which our readings serve as models for our own experiments, which is a powerful way to develop our own craft further. The final week will include a mini-workshop in which the class will share our work.