Instructor: John Boe, University Writing Program, College of Letters & Science
Description: This course will return to the way poetry has been taught for most of history, memorization (as opposed to analysis). For each class each student will be required to have memorized a poem, a poetic passage, or short poems of twelve or more lines. Class will consist of reciting the poetry (twice, since, as Robert Bly taught me, a recited poem is always understood better the second time around) and (time permitting) talking about the poem (specifically about what the reciter and the rest of the class liked about it). The goal of the course is to increase appreciation of poetry by memorizing it, by learning it by heart (as opposed to analyzing it by head).
Format: This course will meet one hour a week for ten weeks. To a certain degree, students will have freedom to choose what to memorize. No song lyrics will be allowed, one Shakespeare sonnet will be required, and students will be asked to get my approval (via email) for what they are going to recite. I will loan out a number of collections (Dickinson,Yeats, Frost, Roethke, Neruda, and many others) and anthologies, which the students can use to find poems. I will be happy to recommend poems I really love to individual students. Grading: Recitation of poems, 75%: evaluated on the basis of students’ successful memorization and recitation; 1000-1500 word paper, 25% (This will include copies of all memorized poems and discussion about why these poems were chosen)
About the Instructor: John Boe is a Lecturer in the University Writing Program. He is also a writer, editor, and professional storyteller. He regularly teaches a wide range of writing courses, a Shakespeare course in London each summer, a storytelling course for Integrated Studies, and Fable, Fairy Tales, and Parables for Comparative Literature.