Training in writing expository prose. Instruction in expository writing in conjunction with reading literature. Satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement.

What is poetry? What is a poem, and who even cares? Why is it that humans have written poems for thousands of years? What can a poem mean or matter in the hypersaturated, digitized 21st-century? In this course we’ll read a selection of English-language poetry, most of it contemporary, and try to understand the technology known as poetry, what it can do, and how it might move us, change us, or inspire new ways of thinking. We’ll look at several full-length collections by important contemporary authors, and in doing so, we’ll come to understand what a book of poetry can look like, and how it might function in the broader culture, now and in the past, as something that might help us live, and help us see our own lives a little bit better. The broader purpose of this course is to develop your critical reading and writing skills, whatever your major might be. Over the semester, you’ll write a series of short papers and revise three of them. We’ll study the summary and synthesis of materials we read, the construction of logical and persuasive arguments, the conveying of attitudes and information. You’ll learn by practicing these skills, by thinking about and talking about your own efforts and those of your fellow students, and by analyzing the work of other writers.

Requisites

• Satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing Requirement

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills