Questions? ggopen@duke.edu
This course has two aims: (1) To develop skills in the rhetorcal analysis of poetry; and (2) To develop the ability to read poetry aloud. The latter will make use of the former; and the former will benefit from the latter.
Rather than read large amounts of poetry, we will look closely at a smaller amount, allowing the opportunity to re-visit texts several times. There will be constant writing assignments -- explorations, not papers. There will also be constant performance of poetry, in private (by tape recording), in class, and (at the end of the term) in public. There will be one formal paper at the end of the term.
Required texts:
Arthur Quinn: Figures of Speech. (Hermagoras)
Shira Wolosky: The Art of Poetry: How to Read a Poem (Oxford)
Harold Bloom: The Art of Reading Poetry (Perennial)
Mark Strand and Eavan Boland: The Making of a Poem (Norton)
Harvey Gross: The Structure of Verse
For the final project, you will be placed in groups of three or four. Together you will choose a pair of the following poets to "live with" during the term: George Herbert; George Meredith; Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Emily Dickinson; Edwin Arlington Robinson; Robert Frost; Anne Sexton; and Seamus Heaney. You will be performing your selection of their poetry on tape, in class, and in one or two public performances. This oral effort will be complemented by a written rhetorical analysis of a one or two poems.
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