ONLINE: Come read and discuss the poems of two of the most important American poets of the last 100-plus years. Robert Frost had four Pulitzer Prizes among his awards, while William Carlos Williams won the first National Book Award for poetry in 1950 and a posthumous Pulitzer in 1963. The poets had striking differences in their work, but both influenced generations of writers in America and abroad. Frost used traditional forms and styles in his often-deceiving pictures of “simple” rural American people and landscapes. His rural poems speak to larger metaphysical questions and his views on nature allow for romantic idealism and stark reality. Williams, with his use of modernist free verse, irregular lineation and elevation of “ordinary objects” into subjects of art broke new ground. Williams wanted to create an “American voice,” and break from the British pastoral tradition. The course will explore the differences in approach and vision of these two pillars of 20th-century American literature. | Facilitated discussion.
Max enrollment: 15.
