Steger, Sara
TR 12:45 PM
Park Hall 149
Poems. They're hackneyed and full of cliches. They're inspired and life-changing. They're pithy, they're catchy, they're mind-numbingly long and boring. They're sung, screamed, muttered, whispered in a lover's ear, and hissed in a curse. They rhyme, and they don't. They have meter, and they don't. They follow rules, and they don't. The more you study poetry, the more you begin asking what a poem really is.
In this class, we'll analyze poems and study the formal elements of poetry so that we can ask better questions about why a poet chose to use a particular form, meter, word, or sound. Our approach will be topical, inviting us to compare the ways that poems across time explore experiences with:
Each student will make a 15-minute presentation on an assigned term. Students will reference at least two sources for the presentation, and they will be required to explicitly relate the term to at least one of the poems assigned for the day.
During the final two weeks of class, each student will have a day in which they assign one or two poems for their classmates to read prior to class. They will then lead a thirty-minute discussion about their poem(s).
Students will submit two 1,200-1,500 explications (i.e. close readings of the formal elements) of poems. We will spend time in revision, peer review, and workshopping for these two essays.
The final project for the class will take the place of a final exam. Students will be given a choice of topics (some involving a creative and/or multimodal component), which I will distribute two weeks prior to the due date. Projects will demonstrate the student's learning through writing (analysis and/or reflection).