Dickinson and Bishop

In this course we will study, in significant depth, the lives and work of poets Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop. These authors are important and widely discussed; thus our topics will include a range of aesthetic, literary-historical, biographical, and political perspectives. And we will make use of a range of archival materials—journal entries, letters, drafts of poems—both published and unpublished. At the heart of our discussions, however, will be the poems these great writers produced. We will learn about ways to read and explicate poems, and about the use of archival materials in literary research and analysis. 3 hrs. sem.