To study poetry in a comparative light is to travel within cultures and languages in unique ways that engage the universal and the particular, the personal and the political, the traditional and the groundbreaking. This course provides the opportunity to read poetry from a wide range of traditions, eras, and styles. We will also look beyond the cultures that gave rise to the poets to the culture of the poets themselves-their self-presentation and reception. Questions of identity, beauty, history, place, technique, and creativity will go hand in hand with explorations of individual themes in each poet's work. Our comparative focus will also help us formulate useful questions about the puzzling nature of reading poetry in translation. Selections from music and theory, as well as an exploration of the issues surrounding translation, will lend support to our investigations, as will class poetry readings and other gatherings in the spirit of the great nineteenth-century salons and twentieth-century literary happenings. Poets include Rumi, Omar Khayyam (Persia), Saint John of the Cross, Lorca (Spain), Pushkin, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky (Russia), Szymborska (Poland), Adonis (Lebanon), Sappho, Cavafy (Greece), Carson (Canada), Neruda (Chile), Sor Juana de la Cruz (Mexico), Rimbaud (France), Senghor (Senegal), and T.S. Eliot. Conducted in English. Format: seminar. Evaluation will be based on meaningful participation, three short papers, and one term paper of 10-15 pages. Prerequisites: any 200-level literature course at Williams, or by permission of the instructors. No enrollment limit (expected: 15). (Literary Genres)