My evening course on American literature is underway! Feel free to sign up and drop by any time between now and November! To join the course and the community, sign up for $10/month at Patreon.com/CloseReadingPoetry.
Week 1: Introduction to American Transcendentalism and Renaissance
Monday September 2, 6pm EST
Readings: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” (1836); Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” (1862)
Week 2: Emerson’s Essays and Poetry
Monday September 9, 6pm EST
Readings of essays: “The Divinity School Address” (1838) and “Self-Reliance” (1841)
Readings of poems: “Uriel,” “Brahma,” “Concord Hymn,” “Days,” “The Sphinx,” and “The Snow-Storm”
Week 3: Thoreau’s Walden pt. I
Monday September 16, 6pm EST
Readings: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Chapter II “Where I Lived, and What I lived for,” III: “Reading,” IV “Sounds, V “Solitude”
Week 4: Thoreau’s Walden pt. II
Monday September 23, 6pm EST
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Chapters VI “Visitors,” VIII “The Bean-field,” XI “Higher Laws,” “XV “Winter Animals”
Week 5:Thoreau’s Walden pt. III
Monday September 30, 6pm EST
Readings: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Chapters XVII “Spring” and XVIII “Conclusion”
Poems: “Epitaph on the World,” “Low Anchored Cloud Mist,”
Summer Rain”
Week 6: The Poetry and Poetics of Walt Whitman
Monday October 7, 6pm EST
Readings: Walt Whitman Song of Myself and “Preface” to the Leaves of Grass, 1855
Week 7: The Later Poetry of Walt Whitman
Monday October 14, 6pm EST
Readings: Whitman, “Song of the Open Road” and Drum-Taps (1865)
Week 8: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson (Johnson edition)
Monday October 21, 6pm EST
Readings: "The Gentian weaves her fringes" 18
"I never lost as much but twice" 49
"Success is counted sweetest" 67
"Will there really be a 'Morning'" 101
"'Faith' is a fine invention" 185
"I'm 'wife' - I've finished that -" 199
"I taste a liquor never brewed" 214
"Safe in their alabaster chambers" 216
"Wild nights--wild nights" 249
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers" 257
"There's a certain slant of light" 258
"I felt a funeral in my brain" 280
"I'm nobody! Who are you" 288
"The soul selects her own society" 303
"Some keep the Sabbath going to church" 324
"Before I got my eye put out" 327
"A bird came down the walk" 328
Week 9: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Monday October 28, 6pm EST
Readings:
"After great pain a formal feeling comes" 341
"Much madness is divinest sense" 435
"This is my letter to the world" 441
"I heard a fly buzz" 465
"I died for beauty, but was scarce" 499
"I started early - Took my Dog -" 520
"The shut me up in prose" 613
"The Brain - is wider than the Sky-" 632
"I cannot live with You -" 640
"Pain has an element of blank" 650
"I dwell in possibility" 657
"To be alive is power" 677
"Because I could not stop for death" 712, 754,
"Split the lark and you'll find the music" 861
"A narrow fellow in the grass" 986
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant" 1129
"A word is dead when it is said" 1212
"Apparently with no surprise" 1624
"My life closed twice before its close" 1732
Week 10: Frederick Douglass and the American Jeremiad
Monday November 4, 6pm EST
Readings: Frederick Douglass, Oration titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Week 11: Edgar Allan Poe’s Poetry
Monday November 11, 6pm EST
Readings: “Sonnet: To Science,” “To Helen,” “Israfel,” “The city in the Sea,” “Alone,” “The Raven,” “Annabell Lee.”
Week 12: Herman Melville’s Poetry
Monday November 18, 6pm EST
Readings: from Battle-Pieces “The Portent,” “The March into Virginia,” Shiloh,” “The House-top”; from John Maar and Other Sailors, “The Maldive Shark”; from Timoleon, Etc., “Monody.”
Adam Walker - Close Reading Poetry
My evening course on American literature is underway! Feel free to sign up and drop by any time between now and November! To join the course and the community, sign up for $10/month at Patreon.com/CloseReadingPoetry.
Week 1: Introduction to American Transcendentalism and Renaissance
Monday September 2, 6pm EST
Readings: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” (1836); Henry David Thoreau, “Walking” (1862)
Week 2: Emerson’s Essays and Poetry
Monday September 9, 6pm EST
Readings of essays: “The Divinity School Address” (1838) and “Self-Reliance” (1841)
Readings of poems: “Uriel,” “Brahma,” “Concord Hymn,” “Days,” “The Sphinx,” and “The Snow-Storm”
Week 3: Thoreau’s Walden pt. I
Monday September 16, 6pm EST
Readings: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Chapter II “Where I Lived, and What I lived for,” III: “Reading,” IV “Sounds, V “Solitude”
Week 4: Thoreau’s Walden pt. II
Monday September 23, 6pm EST
Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Chapters VI “Visitors,” VIII “The Bean-field,” XI “Higher Laws,” “XV “Winter Animals”
Week 5:Thoreau’s Walden pt. III
Monday September 30, 6pm EST
Readings: Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Chapters XVII “Spring” and XVIII “Conclusion”
Poems: “Epitaph on the World,” “Low Anchored Cloud Mist,”
Summer Rain”
Week 6: The Poetry and Poetics of Walt Whitman
Monday October 7, 6pm EST
Readings: Walt Whitman Song of Myself and “Preface” to the Leaves of Grass, 1855
Week 7: The Later Poetry of Walt Whitman
Monday October 14, 6pm EST
Readings: Whitman, “Song of the Open Road” and Drum-Taps (1865)
Week 8: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson (Johnson edition)
Monday October 21, 6pm EST
Readings: "The Gentian weaves her fringes" 18
"I never lost as much but twice" 49
"Success is counted sweetest" 67
"Will there really be a 'Morning'" 101
"'Faith' is a fine invention" 185
"I'm 'wife' - I've finished that -" 199
"I taste a liquor never brewed" 214
"Safe in their alabaster chambers" 216
"Wild nights--wild nights" 249
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers" 257
"There's a certain slant of light" 258
"I felt a funeral in my brain" 280
"I'm nobody! Who are you" 288
"The soul selects her own society" 303
"Some keep the Sabbath going to church" 324
"Before I got my eye put out" 327
"A bird came down the walk" 328
Week 9: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson
Monday October 28, 6pm EST
Readings:
"After great pain a formal feeling comes" 341
"Much madness is divinest sense" 435
"This is my letter to the world" 441
"I heard a fly buzz" 465
"I died for beauty, but was scarce" 499
"I started early - Took my Dog -" 520
"The shut me up in prose" 613
"The Brain - is wider than the Sky-" 632
"I cannot live with You -" 640
"Pain has an element of blank" 650
"I dwell in possibility" 657
"To be alive is power" 677
"Because I could not stop for death" 712, 754,
"Split the lark and you'll find the music" 861
"A narrow fellow in the grass" 986
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant" 1129
"A word is dead when it is said" 1212
"Apparently with no surprise" 1624
"My life closed twice before its close" 1732
Week 10: Frederick Douglass and the American Jeremiad
Monday November 4, 6pm EST
Readings: Frederick Douglass, Oration titled “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
Week 11: Edgar Allan Poe’s Poetry
Monday November 11, 6pm EST
Readings: “Sonnet: To Science,” “To Helen,” “Israfel,” “The city in the Sea,” “Alone,” “The Raven,” “Annabell Lee.”
Week 12: Herman Melville’s Poetry
Monday November 18, 6pm EST
Readings: from Battle-Pieces “The Portent,” “The March into Virginia,” Shiloh,” “The House-top”; from John Maar and Other Sailors, “The Maldive Shark”; from Timoleon, Etc., “Monody.”
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