Modern American Poetry

Great Lectures, big content, high academic level But...Lectures are deeply dull: all but 5 or 6 (on nearly 70) are long static videos of a lecturer speaking like he/she is reading, sometimes even robot-like speeches, no cacthy at all. Sessions are based on Peer Evaluation, but often to find peers is a problem. I worked hard to do my assignment on time, then I had to switch sessions because no one was assessing my work.

I don't have time and money to complete the course but this was so enlightening and a great intro to Modern American Poetry. There were a lot of things I didn't even realize I didn't know. This makes me definitely more eager to investigate more! Thank you so much for this opportunity.

A class on Modern American Poetry and Ezra Pound was only treated secondarily? Crazy!As well, much of my time on recommended reading was spent looking for the poetry. Why are there no links to the poetry we are learning about?

This iteration of the course (August-September 2016) fizzled because so few students were actively participating. Early in the course, I worked diligently on my written contributions to the discussion forums, but then there was so little peer response that I gradually came to understand that I was mostly just talking to myself. Halfway through the course, I gave up on the forums.But I read all the poems, viewed the videos and took the quizzes. The quizzes are lame, the poetry selection is great, and the video lectures are all worthwhile. I had initial misgivings about some of the videos. The improvised round-table discussions of meta-poems by Dickinson, Stevens and Mullen (module 4, lesson 4) initially seemed too colloquial and not incisive, but then I realized they had value as models for how to grope into an initial understanding of a strange poem. The lecture on Hart Crane (module 1, lesson 4) was too difficult for me to follow in real-time spoken form, but then I found I could understand some of it by frequently stopping and starting the video, re-reading the lecture text in transcript, and taking long breaks for careful review of Crane's verse and for research about some of its allusions and associations. That lecture might have made more sense in purely written form, and I wonder if it was so daunting that it scared off some of the students who started the course. As a whole, the course managed a satisfying balance between discussion of the poetry itself and discussion of the social and economic contexts in which the poetry was created and consumed. I especially appreciated the clarity of Karen Ford's many lectures and Tim Newcomb's lively and enthusiastic investigation of the role of little magazines in the 1910s & 1920s.

In depth, and eye opening to many American poets. A great mind expander and real introduction to the poetry of the Native Americans. Brilliant.