This is a multi-session seminar and must be taken as a series.
Poetry is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos. — I. A. Richards
Words for music perhaps. — W.B. Yeats
This seminar will address itself to lyric poetry—poems that are relatively short, emotionally charged, and usually expressed in the first person. We shall cover among others such “greats” as Wyatt, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Dickinson, Yeats, Eliot, and Stevens. Each class will center on some half dozen poems in an effort to discover the principle of order that each poem establishes. The order is linguistic and expresses a literal meaning; it is also rhythmical and phonetic, and suggests music. Each class will therefore conclude with poems that have been set to music. The aim is to gain a sense of how lyric poetry means, engages feelings, and discloses insight that can illuminate, if not counter, the chaos of human experience.
Cost: $85
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