Stuart Dischell
dischell@uncg.edu
Shawn Delgado, Teaching Intern
smdelgad@uncg.edu
Spanning nearly the entire history of writing in English, this course will focus on the form of the
enduring lyric poem—its evolution, development, and variations. We will take a close look at
over one hundred examples from Caedmon’s “Hymn” to James Wright’s “A Blessing.” Along
the way we may give extended concentration to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats,
Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and Hughes--as well as numerous other ridiculously
well-known poets, such as Wyatt, Herrick, Ginsberg, and Plath. If you don’t have a solid
background in poetry, you certainly will have one after this course.
Requirements: One memorization assignment, two short essays, two examinations. Class
attendance: you must not miss more than two classes or your grade may be reduced. All essay
assignments must be submitted in hard copy, double-spaced on one side of the paper. We will
take a direct approach to the poems and discuss the ways in which poems are made and how they
mean. Classes will be conducted in a lecture/discussion format. The student should come to class
having read and read aloud several times the poems under consideration. Each poem should
provoke the student into preparing questions and comments for classroom consideration.
Text: The Norton Anthology of Poetry, fifth edition, Ferguson, et al, editors
READING LIST
“Caedmon’s Hymn”
“Riddles”
“Now Go’th Sun Under Wood”
“The Cuckoo Song”
“Ubi Sun Qui Ante Nos Fuerunt?”
“Alison”
Lines from the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (first 34)
“To Rosamond”
“The Smiling Mouth”
“I have a Young Sister”
“Western Wind”
“The Silver Swan”
“As You Came From the Holy Land of Walsingham”
“Whoso List to Hunt”
“They Flee from Me”
“[Ah silly pugg...}
“A Communication Which the Author Had to London...”
“The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd”
“The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Sonnets: 12, 18, 29, 30, 65, 73, 116, 130, 138
“Women’s Constancy”
“Still to Be Neat”
“Delight in Disorder”
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Chaucer
Chaucer
D’Orleans
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Wyatt
Wyatt
Queen Elizabeth
Whitney
Ralegh
Marlowe
Shakespeare
Donne
Jonson
Herrick
“To the Virgins”
“Love III”
“Song”
“To His Coy Mistress”
From “Jubilate Agno”
“Written Near a Churchyard..”
“A Poison Tree”
“The Garden of Love”
“London”
“Sunflower”
“To a Mouse”
“Lines (Tintern Abbey)”
“Resolution and Independence”
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
“My Heart Leaps Up”
“Frost at Midnight”
“Ozymandias”
“Ode to a Nightingale”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
“Sonnet 43"
Selections from “Song of Myself” (1,6,11,24,52)
“Dover Beach”
Poems 258, 280,303, 341, 465, 712
“In an Artist’s Studio”
“Spring and Fall”
“Inversnaid”
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree”
“When You Are Old”
“Adam’s Curse”
“The Second Coming”
“Sailing to Byzantium”
“We Wear the Mask”
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
“The River Merchant’s Wife, A Letter”
“In A Station of the Metro”
“The Garret”
“The Garden”
“The Young Housewife”
“Danse Russe”
“This Is Just To Say”
“The Red Wheelbarrow”
“The Steeple-Jack”
“The Anecdote of the Jar”
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
“The Man with the Blue Guitar”
“September 1, 1939”
Herrick
Herbert
Suckling
Marvell
Smart
Smith
Blake
Blake
Blake
Blake
Burns
Wordsworth
Wordsworth
Wordsworth
Wordsworth
Coleridge
Shelley
Keats
Keats
Browning
Whitman
Arnold
Dickinson
Rossetti
Hopkins
Hopkins
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Yeats
Dunbar
Eliot
Pound
Pound
Pound
Pound
Williams
Williams
Williams
Williams
Moore
Stevens
Stevens
Stevens
Auden
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers “
“Theme for English B”
“The Weary Blues”
“Kitchenette Building”
“We Real Cool”
“The Force That Through the Green Fuse…”
“Howl”
“Marriage”
“The Day Lady Died”
“For the Union Dead”
“Epilogue”
“My Papa’s Waltz”
“In the Waiting Room”
“One Art”
“Daddy”
“Lady Lazarus”
“Dream Song 14
“Those Winter Sundays”
“The Idea of Ancestry”
“Ilu, the Talking Drum”
“O Taste and See”
“A Blessing”
.
Hughes
Hughes
Hughes
Brooks
Brooks
Thomas
Ginsberg
Corso
O’Hara
Lowell
Lowell
Roethke
Bishop
Bishop
Plath
Plath
Berryman
Hayden
Knight
Knight
Levertov
Wright