Poetry 101: Great, Good, Bad and Terrible
Overview
What’s so special about poetry? In school we learned that this was difficult stuff, which required a whole system of knowledge to understand it. Stumbled across in adult life, it can seem old-fashioned and elitist, or even willfully difficult. After all, what can a poem offer that a song lyric doesn’t? In this seminar, Professor Fiona Sampson, who is one of the UK’s leading poets as well as a scholar, will help sweep away such bad experiences and preconceptions. We will walk through examples of poems that are great, good, bad, and terrible – and that have mostly been written by poets who are alive today – in order to demystify the art of poetry.
Recommended Reading:
Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond, by Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar, Eds.
Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English, 1500 – 2001, by Carolyn Forché and Duncan Wu, Eds.
The Poets Laureate Anthology, by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt, Ed.
I did appreciate Dr. Sampson’s gamut of poetry from the really awful to the sublime, along with the explanations she gave. Very interesting and she made me want to delve into more. Thank you!