Courses

This seminar begins with a simple paradox: why is it that poetry is inconsequential to our day-to-day lives, but when faced with catastrophe--war, environmental disaster, personal loss--it is so common to turn to poetry? As W.H. Auden wrote in response to the death of W.B. Yeats and in the shadow of a new war, "poetry makes nothing happen," and yet "it survives/ ... / A way of happening, a mouth." Our task will be to understand what Auden meant as well as to explore alternative views of poetry's resources for responding to catastrophe. After a brief introduction to interpreting poetic form, both in single-author works and also in groups of poems from different poets written in response to specific catastrophes (World War I, the Holocaust, and 9/11). We will study works from a variety of schools and movements, mainly British and American, with all readings in English. Some of the poets considered are Wilfred Owen, W.H. Auden, Jorie Graham, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, H.D., and Paul Celan.