How do poems come to assume their particular forms? What is a poem's horizon of possibilities? To answer these questions, we will engage in comparative poetics, focussing on nineteenth- and twentieth-century American work. Beginning with an extended consideration of Whitman and Dickinson, we will learn to identify a poet's poetic program (however loosely defined) as it changes over time and circumstance. In addition to poems, we will consider letters, journals, essays and taped performances. We will pay special attention to the social and political contexts of "schools" or "movements," listening for each poet's underlying sense of her or his place in the world. The course will be organized around pairings selected from the following list: Hart Crane; Marianne Moore; William Carlos Williams; Langston Hughes; Robinson Jeffers; Imiri Baraka; Adrienne Rich; Gary Snyder; the Black Mountain School (e.g., Olson, Creeley, Levertov); the Beats (e.g., Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti); the New York School (e.g., Ashbery, O'Hara). Students should emerge from this course with a solid sense of the varieties of modern American poetry, but also, and perhaps more importantly, an immediate understanding of how to handle poems as readers. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: This course is designated both as "writing intensive" and as part of the Critical Reasoning and Analytical Skills initiative: students will be asked to write frequently and to revise steadily, producing a total of 20 pages of writing over the course of the semester. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference to first- and second-year students and majors who have yet to take a Gateway course. This course is writing intensive. (This course is part of the Critical Reasoning and Analytical Skills initiative. ) (Post-1900)