Readings in English Poetry Prof. Tien-en Kao
Autumn 2008 Fridays, 3:30—5:20 pm


Text: Perrine’s Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, eds. Thomas R. Arp
And Greg Johnson (Harcourt College Publishers, 12th Edition)

This course aims at introducing beginning students to the nature and variety of English poetry. In class we seek to familiarize students with the elements of poetry in a progression in which each new topic builds on what preceded it. Gradually students will come to understand and appreciate such terms as imagery, rhyme, rhythm, metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy, symbol, allegory, connotation, paradox, overstatement, understatement, irony, sound repetition, allusion, etc. They will also be exposed to a variety of genres and sub-genres of poetry such as ballad, sonnet, ode, villanelle, blank verse, dramatic monologue, and free verse. However, the first and foremost emphasis remains in teaching students to read, enjoy, interpret, and evaluate each individual poem. In this Fall Semester (the first half of the academic year), poems to be closely analyzed in class will be as follows:

Tentative Syllabus:


1st week: Alexander Pope, “Sound and Sense”(p.227); Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica” (pp.21-22); Adrienne Rich, “Poetry: I” (pp.396-397)
2nd week: Wilfred Owen, “Dulce et Decorum Est” (p.7); Keith Douglas, “Vergissmeinnicht”
3rd week: William Shakespeare, “Winter” (p.6); Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” (p.66); Thomas Hardy, “The Darkling Thrush” (pp.372-373)
4th week: Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring” (p.59) ; William Carlos Williams, “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” (p.60); e. e. cummings, “in Just—“ (p.139) William Shakespeare, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (p.12);
5th week: Robert Hayden, “The Whipping” (p.12); Gwendolyn Brooks, “Kitchenette Building” (p.16) ; Langston Hughes, “Cross” (p. 49), “Dream Deferred”
6th week: Langston Hughes, “Suicide Note” (pp.18-19); William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (p.17); Mari Evans, “When in Rome” (p.35)
7th week: Philip Larkin, “A Study of Reading Habits” (p.27), “Toads” (p.83)
8th week: Philip Larkin, “Aubade” (p.385), “Church Going” (p.177)
9th week: Mid-term Exam
10th week: Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach” (pp.176-177); Wallace Stevens, “Sunday Morning” (pp.290-294)
11th week: A. E. Housman, “Is my team plowing” (p.30), “Loveliest of Trees” (p.149), “Terence, this is stupid stuff” (p.19)
12th week: Sylvia Plath, “Mirror” (p.38); Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Miniver Cheevy” (pp.141-142)
13th week: Ellen Kay, “Pathedy of Manners” (pp.45-46); William Shakespeare, “When my love swears that she is made of truth” (p.44), “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” (pp.402-403)
14th week: William Wordsworth, “The world is too much with us” (p.50); John Keats, “When I have fears that I may cease to be” (pp.272-273), On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (pp.246-247)
15th week: John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (pp.278-280), “Ode to a Nightingale” (pp.382-384)
16th week: John Keats, “To Autumn” (pp.68-69), “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (pp.381-382); Dudley Randall, “Ballad of Birmingham” (pp.14-15)
17th week: Final Exam