The definition of poetry that is most relevant to the present course is "the art of making music out of (ordinary) life" (Kowit).  But we will not be talking about poetry as "feel-good" experience, as Muzak background, or as effortless birdsong.  Rather, we will study the ways in which poetry works--and by poetry, we will mean not just anything that has rhyme or rhythm, but specifically the results of people trying to use all the powers of language simultaneously--its ability to appeal to our intelligence, our imagination, and our senses. In other words, students will learn the language and craft of the practicing poet, though this course will not focus on the writing of their own poems.

Our focus will be on reading some of that large body of poems in English, from the twelfth century almost to the twenty-first, that have been, or might be, set to music--"lyric" poetry in its most literal sense.  Students do not have to be musicians to take this class, but they will find it helpful if they enjoy music, because we will often find ourselves listening to these poems in their musical settings.  But we will also study poems that are, like the title Yeats gave to one of his volumes of poems, "Words for Music--Perhaps."

Most lyric poems fall into one of three broad classes: songs (and sonnets)--short, intense expressions of reaction to an emotional experience or of a particular state of mind and heart; ballads--story poems told in the form of reports of intense episodes at key moments in the story; and odes (or elegies, or meditations, or "conversation poems")--longer poems that do not tell a story, but rather work through some intense emotional crisis or philosophical issue before the eyes, as it were, of the reader. Intensity, then, will be the keynote of our study.

While we will compare and contrast poems from different periods, in these different varieties, that deal with universal topics such as love, loss, commitment, and betrayal,  we will not attempt to establish a history of the lyric poem.  Rather, our emphasis will be primarily on what the poems of the past have to offer us who live, feel, and sing in the present day, and to a secondary extent on the question of which poems of the present may have such value for future readers.

I respectfully but earnestly request that all students consider the above statement carefully.  If your purposes in signing up for the course do not match these purposes, please choose another course. Please do not take this course if you hate and resent poetry, just because it meets at a convenient hour or fills a requirement. Thank you.