Fall 2017 Startup

Welcome to Introduction to Poetry!

My goal with this course is to empower you with the critical vocabulary and analytical techniques you need to increase the profit and pleasure you derive from reading poetry. We will read some wonderful poetry and examine and discuss it from a variety of artistic, critical, cultural, and media perspectives. And through this intense study of the poetic function of language, you will discover poetry all around you, as it exists in everyday uses of the word.

Startup

  • Read the Syllabus.
  • Order your books:
    • The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Amazon)
    • Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poets for the Next Generation (Amazon)
    • 100 Best-Loved Poems (Amazon)
  • Join our Facebook Group.

Assignment

  • In our Facebook Group, share a poem (directly or as a link) that you enjoy and persuade us all to read it in 1-2 sentences. (Example: What is so cool about it? Why would we want to click on the link or read the poem in your post? Sell us on the poem!)
  • Post this before August 15 (you have until midnight!)
  • Before class on Wednesday, August 16 visit our Facebook Group and read 3 of the most compelling poems shared, leaving a brief (or extensive) comment on the poem.
  • Conversations are encouraged!

By Leonardo Flores

Professor Leonardo Flores is Chair of the English Department at Appalachian State University. He taught at the English Department at University of Puerto Rico: Mayagüez Campus from 1994 to 2019. He is President of the Electronic Literature Organization. He was the 2012-2013 Fulbright Scholar in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen in Norway. His research areas are electronic literature and its preservation via criticism, documentation, and digital archives. He is the creator of a scholarly blogging project titled I ♥ E-Poetry, co-editor of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3, and has a Spanish language e-lit column in 80 Grados. He is currently co-editing the first Anthology of Latin American Electronic Literature. For more information on his current work, visit leonardoflores.net.