ENGL-261 20th Century Women Poets

Faculty:

Rifkin, Libbie

In this class we'll examine the writing lives of selected 20th century women poets who played significant roles in shaping the literary fields in which they worked. Specifically, we'll be studying poets who doubled as editors, critics, publishers, as well as canon- and scene-makers. We will read closely the careers of four major figures--Marianne Moore, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Notley--but we will not be limited to single authors. Rather we will broaden our sense of both literature and literary history by studying networks of cultural workers. We will have particularly rich connections to explore during the two periods in which women wielded the most power to create the conditions for their own writing and its reception: Modernism (1910-30), and the re-emergence of women's poetic communities as second wave feminism made its mark in the 70s and 80s.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

ENGL-261-01 The Raw and the Cooked: Conflict in Contemporary American Poetry

Faculty:

Rifkin, Libbie

The Raw and the Cooked: Conflict in Contemporary American Poetry

In the early 1960s, two anthologies helped harden the world of poetry into a scene of conflict. Writers of well-wrought, formally traditional poetry like Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, and the young Adrienne Rich squared off against such wild bards of spontaneity as Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Diane Di Prima. The clash mirrored the country's emerging cultural and political divides, and helped shape the way poetry has been read and taught ever since. In this course we'll use "conflict" as a means of mapping the vast terrain of American poetry from 1950 to the present, exploring social struggles as well as aesthetic differences in a wide range of poets, including those currently writing for the page, the stage, and producing work in electronic media.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

Other academic years
There is information about this course number in other academic years:

• 2004-2005 Fall and Spring
• 2005-2006 Fall and Spring
• 2007-2008 Fall and Spring
• 2008-2009 Fall and Spring
• 2010-2011 Fall and Spring
• 2013-2014 Fall and Spring

More information
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