Outline: For the spring term, we’ll read and discuss some of the finest American poetry from mid to late 20th century. While lectures will address aspects of literary aesthetics, form, terminology, and meaning, study and discussion will also afford insight into the values, aesthetics, and cultural details of contemporary American thought and life. Along the way, we will peer more deeply into the breadth and wealth of the English language, probing vocabulary, cadence, metaphor, idiom, etymology, connotation, subtextual resonance, and related matters.