Carolina Courses Online

ENGL 125: Introduction to Poetry

Course Home Page Blackboard Instructor’s E-mail
Overview and Goals Course Materials Method
Assignments and Exams Grading Honor Code
Course Mechanics Schedule

Overview and Goals

Nearly everyone loves some form of poetry—in a popular song, a sentimental poem found on a greeting card, a patriotic hymn, or a beautifully worded epitaph on a gravestone. It is unlike any other artistic form, and each poem conveys a message that cannot be transmitted any other way. In this class, we are going to explore how poetry creates that meaning.

English 125 is most importantly a class about learning how to read, hear, and enjoy poetry. To that end, we will spend most of our time on shorter, lyric poems. We will probably look at some corollary materials, such as illustrations and historical information, but will mostly focus on finding our way through lines of poetry.

I have four main goals for you as you take this course:

  1. that you hear poetry when you read it
  2. that you pay attention to all the meaningful details of a poem
  3. that you can discuss poetry critically and in a manner suited to a broader audience
  4. that you gain some historical perspective of English and American poetry, especially within literary history.

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Course Materials

The texts can be obtained from the Higher Grounds bookstore at the Friday Center in person, by ordering online, or by printing and mailing the book order form.

All page numbers in the lessons refer to the Norton Anthology of Poetry, Shorter Fifth Edition.

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Method

This course does not carry a heavy reading load because I want you to read the assigned poems aloud. I have also included as many recordings as I could find. In general, we will move chronologically, because I think it helps to see how the forms of poetry change with time. We will always want to be looking for the connections among the historical periods and the forms. For example, we will read a lot of sonnets, and you will be able to read a Christina Rossetti poem and look back to Shakespeare or Donne to see how Rossetti alters the form to express her own content.

Words or phrases marked in bold are usually terms that need to be looked up. Things that are italicized are either for emphasis or to remind you of a term you should know (and maybe review).

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Assignments and Exams

Examinations

There will be a midterm and final exam. Both exams will likely include long-answer identification passages, terms, essays, and an explication. I will e-mail the exam questions to you and you will e-mail your answers to me as a Microsoft Word document attachment by 11:59 pm Eastern Time the following day. See Schedule for exact dates.

Papers

You will write six papers. Five are short papers (two pages) on various elements of poetic form. You may revise two short papers for a better score. The final paper will be four to five pages long and will be an explication. Late papers will be marked down. Papers should be written in Microsoft Word and submitted as attachments.

Discussion Forum

You must post at least once and respond at least once for each topic. Each lesson is designed to take one week of the academic calendar year, so you will be posting about six times a week. Our discussion forums are on Blackboard. See Course Mechanics for details.

Guidelines for Discussion Forum Posts

The Blackboard discussion forum is our virtual classroom. This is where we interact, test out ideas, and have those ideas evaluated. It is the only way we have to know each other and get comfortable with each other. I hope that we will develop a sense of coherence and community as a class, even though we are online. Please do think through your posts, and don't write off the top of your head. Also speak plainly and directly, rather than trying to sound a certain way. Be willing, however, to risk an idea that you think might be “off” or even wrong. By accepting occasional skepticism, you open yourself up more to your classmates and to me, and you create a valuable learning experience for everyone. Please be thoughtful and respectful of others' ideas and questions so that we can maintain trusting and open discussions.

Reading Journal

Your electronic reading journal is a way of keeping up with some of the more nitty-gritty elements of reading—looking up words, making notes about rhyme schemes, paraphrasing difficult lines, and so on. I will ask you to submit it (as a Microsoft Word file) at three points during the semester.

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Grading

Your final grade will be itemized thus, for a total of 1,000 points:         

Course Component
Points
Five short papers (45 points each)
225
Final paper
75
Reading journal (30 points the first two times you hand it in; 40 points the last time)
100
Midterm
200
Final
200
Discussion forum participation
200

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Honor Code

Academic dishonesty in any form is unacceptable. Review the University’s honor code. If you have questions about what constitutes an honor violation in this course, please contact me.

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Course Mechanics

Blackboard

Some of your class components (discussion forums, class listserv) are accessed through a software package called Blackboard, and you will need to log in to Blackboard using a unique identifier known as your UNC Onyen (Only Name You'll Ever Need) and Onyen password.

There is a link to the Blackboard site in the gray navigation bar at the top of every page in this course. Click on that link, and then use your Onyen to log in to Blackboard. Click on the ENGL 125 link, and you will see navigation buttons on the left side of the screen labeled Announcements, Discussion Forum, and so on.

If you experience problems accessing Blackboard, this is what you should do:

Library Services and E-reserves

Students enrolled in Carolina Courses Online can access online library resources from the UNC Library System by linking to Library Services for Distance Education Students. This site includes information on using general online reference works as well as accessing e-reserves.

If you are using an off-campus computer, you will need to enter your Onyen to access the readings that are available through the e-reserve system. The UNC library staff is available to assist any students who have difficulties accessing online library resources. If you encounter difficulties, please report your problem by visiting this Web page for reporting a problem.

Using E-mail

All communication from your instructor will go to your UNC Onyen e-mail address (the one that appears when you post to the discussion forum). Off-campus users can access their UNC e-mail using Webmail. You can have your e-mail forwarded to a different e-mail address by clicking “Forward e-mail” at the Onyen Web site.

If you use a filter on your e-mail account, you are responsible for ensuring that it does not prevent you from receiving messages from me, the course listserv, or Friday Center staff. Hotmail users should be aware that Hotmail will block messages sent from within Blackboard because Blackboard uses “blind carbon copy” to protect privacy. We recommend that you use your UNC Onyen e-mail account rather than forwarding to Hotmail for this course.

Submitting Assignments

It is extremely important for you to save copies of any work you send to me via e-mail. If I don't receive your work, you must have a duplicate copy, indicating the date sent, to prove that you submitted the assignment on time. It is your responsibility to maintain copies of your sent e-mails, as there is no way to guarantee that any e-mail message will be delivered.

Please check your e-mail software to see how it manages sent and saved messages. Some software automatically deletes messages one month after they have been sent; others only save messages if they are filed in folders; others save messages received but not those sent. You may need to send yourself a copy of your e-mailed assignment at the same time you send it to me, or you may need to print a copy of the e-mail message and any attachments to keep in your paper files. No matter how your system works, make sure you know how to save a copy of all work that you submit and that you save the copy for several months beyond the end of the course.

Other Questions

If you have questions regarding

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Schedule

Class begins January 9, and we follow the approved UNC-Chapel Hill academic calendar. Pay close attention to the schedule and the calendar. Click on the link for each lesson to view the assignments and my lecture.

Lesson Topic
Lesson 1: How We Will Read Poetry

 

First Impressions

Rhyme and Meter
Syntax and Imagery

Lesson 2: The Sonnet in England

 

 Sir Philip Sidney
William Shakespeare, Part 1
William Shakespeare, Part 2

Lesson 3: Metaphysical Poetry

 

 John Donne, Part 1
George Herbert
Seductions
Writing Assignment 1

Lesson 4: Later Renaissance Sonnets

 

 John Donne’s Sonnets
George Herbert’s Sonnets
John Milton’s Sonnets
Reading Journal for Lessons 1-4

Lesson 5: From the Neoclassical to the Romantic

 

 Romanticism and the Revival of the Ballad: Wordsworth, Part 1
Wordsworth, Part 2: The “Lucy” Poems
Writing Assignment 2
Blank Verse in the Lyric: Wordsworth, Part 3

Lesson 6: Revolution of the Imagination—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

 “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Parts I-IV
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Parts V-VII
“Kubla Khan” and “Frost at Midnight”

Lesson 7: Other Forms of Romantic Poetry

 

 The Romantic Ode: Keats
Writing Assignment 3
Romantic Sonnets: Wordsworth
Romantic Sonnets: Keats
Midterm exam distributed and taken by appointment

Lesson 8: The Victorian Imagination

 

 Forms of Myth
The Victorian Sonnet
Reading Journal for Lessons 5-8
The Dramatic Monologue

Lesson 9: The Century’s Pulse

 

 Gerard Manley Hopkins
Thomas Hardy
Writing Assignment 4
Emily Dickinson

Lesson 10: Approaching Modernism

 

 William Butler Yeats
Later Yeats
World War I Poetry: Wilfred Owen

Lesson 11: Modernist Form

 

 Robert Frost, Part 1
New Forms for the Imagination
Writing Assignment 5
T.S. Eliot and The Waste Land

Lesson 12: The Formal Return

 

 Robert Frost, Part 2
Dylan Thomas
Philip Larkin

Reading Journal for Lessons 9-12

Revised Writing Assignments
Writing Assignment 6
Final exam distributed and taken by appointment
Please complete a brief online course evaluation. We want to know if this course met your needs and expectations.

Lesson 1