Nature Poetry

Can a poem reframe the relationship between humans and nature? Poets have posed this and similar questions for centuries. Scholars of literature and the environment, or “ecocritics,” ask it anew with reference to ongoing disasters such as global climate change, mass extinction, and new pandemics. In this course we will develop our ecocritical skills by exploring how poems about the human relationship to the biophysical environment can inspire us to rethink our place in the universe. We will read works by such poets as Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Butler Yeats, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Elisabeth Bishop, Stanley Kunitz, Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, Lucia Perillo, and Jorie Graham. (at least one course each in ENAM and ENVS) 3 hrs. sem.