Hauptseminar Great American Poems

This course asks the question: -What is an American Poem?” and promises a number of answers weaving their way through cultural and historic changes in the post-revolutionary period, the 18th century, 19th-century American romanticism, post-World War Two and current poetry: how American poets defined themselves, and how others have seen them, what, if any, are -American” themes and topics. Americans are sometimes regarded as the most autobiographic of poets, treating highly emotional and personal topics. The colonies, the revolution, the idea of endless frontiers and possibilities, slavery, civil rights movements, sexuality, exceptionalism, religion, poems that follow forms as well as free verse and the meanings of these choices for poet and reader, will enter into our discussions. Poets whom we will read include Francis Scott Key, William Cullen Bryant, Phillis Wheatley, Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Julia Ward Howe, Bret Harte, Emily Dickenson,Walt Whitman, Joyce Kilmer, Carl Sandburg, Sara Teasdale, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds. Students are invited to suggest poets whom they would like to read, and two half-sessions may be devoted to writing poems and finding ways to get them published. The Oxford Book of American Poetry, ed. David Lehman, is our text. If you do not wish to buy it, many of the poems are available online. Anglistik Universität Duisburg-Essen WiSe 2014/15 Dr. Knox Raab Melissa