
Explore poetry as a global, expressive form of literature, examining rhythm and rhyme to reveal meanings and lessons, illustrated with Robert Frost's fire and ice.
Explore free verse slam poetry that casts a road trip crash as a cosmic memory, where love, loss, and volume reveal heaven in the last moments.
Explore Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven through auditory reading, capturing midnight dreary mood, gothic imagery, and the dialogue between the speaker and the raven.
Listen to poetry from standard poems by Lewis Carroll, featuring jabber, Bandersnatch, and beamish boy imagery.
Explore how the sonnet defines love as constant and unaltered beyond time and change. Identify metaphors like an ever fixed mark and a star guiding wandering ships through tempests.
Listen to haikus that capture the clash of winter and spring and the sun warming nature. Feelings rise with green shoots and renewed optimism blooming beyond the dark winter.
Examine how a sonnet compares a summer's day to beauty and preserves it through eternal lines against time and death.
Examine the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, the plague sent by Apollo, and the priest crisis as they clash over a ransom and leadership in the Greek coalition.
Listen to poetry through epic scenes and imagery, exploring Beowulf and epic elements described in this lecture.
Explore Shel Silverstein's playful poetry through imaginative adventures, hunger for kindness, and humor, from magical flying shoes to hugs as victory, inviting students to listen, imagine, and interpret.
Poetry is a form of literature that dates back thousands of years, likely to the time of cavemen. It is a beautiful and extremely diverse form of literature that has been shared and made more unique over the years and around the world. In this course, I strive to lay out the basics in which you need to understand poetry. This is an all levels course, and I invite all learners to participate! In this course I will cover the basics in poetry including terminology to help you better understand this beautiful and unique form of literature. In addition to the lectures provided, I have also included short, supplemental assignments which will serve to better your knowledge of poetry. At the end of the lecture, you will find videos of classic poems (or sections of poems) from authors such as Edgar Allan Poe and Shel Silverstein being read aloud. These are accompanied by a short, personal reflection essay. This essay is completely optional; it is recommended, however, as it has been designed to help you better understand and 'feel' poetry. I hope you enjoy this course and find it to be useful in your quest for knowledge in literature and poetry.