This is a replay of a four-week course on literary criticism that ran between November and December 2023. You will receive 4 videos (each session) + course packets and homework readings.

Wednesday 6-8 pm EST - November 29, December 6, 13, 20

Objective correlative. Negative capability. Spots of time. Overflow of spontaneous feeling recollected in tranquility. Field of action. Poetry as a system of syntax. The head by way of the ear to the syllable…

These are critical phrases and paradigms passed down to us by literary critics. If you’ve taken a class with me, then you know I refer to the objective correlative often. Why? Because it’s a handy way to think about what we’re doing on the page as poets. So are the other terms above, and what better way to familiarize ourselves with them than to go back and read the essays and letters they came from.

The aim of this 4-week course is to familiarize you with critical texts you may not have come across, or not contemplated since college. In our discussions, we will connect our readings to poetry today.

Our schedule (subject to amendments!) will look something like this. Readings will be provided beforehand.

Session # 1:

Excerpts from Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” complemented by excerpts from “The Prelude”

Session # 2:

Selected letters from Keats and excerpts of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

Session #3:

Excerpts from T.S. Eliot “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Charles Olson “Projective Verse,” Archibald MacLeish “Ars Poetica”

Session #4: Criticism today: Katie Roiphe, Camille Dungy, Linda Gregg, Nicole Sealey, Zadie Smith, and others

This course is for you if:

• You are a literature enthusiast or a poet who would like a better handle on these critical concepts and paradigms writers often refer back to

• You enjoy the feeling of reading a bit above your reading level—that is, contending with a perspective that can sometimes be challenging, or require revisiting, as literary criticism often does

• You enjoy class discussions and close reading essays and poems

***CLASS ENROLLMENT IS LIMITED***