Recommended Weekly Reading

Upcoming Class

May 20

Class #10

Modern Voices

  • Session 1: Marilyn Nelson, pg. 296-297
  • Session 2: Discussion: The sonnet genre and the sonnet tradition



Recommendations Week by Week

Mar. 18

Class #1

Introductions

Session 1: Introduction to the Classs

Session 2: Introduction to the Features of the Sonnet

     o   Michael Drayton’s sonnet # 61  Pg. 35

Session 3: Guest speaker: Dr. Phillis Levin, editor, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: Five Hundred Years of a Classic Tradition in English. 

     o   Beginnings of the Sonnet Tradition

     o   Petrachan Sonnet: Pattern and Structure

     o   Sonnets by John Milton and Marilyn Nelson

     o   Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Hayes

 

Class #2  The Shakespearean Sonnet

Mar. 25

 

April 1

Class #3

The Sonnet by a Metaphysical and by a Puritan Humanist

Session 1: John Donne

     o   Pgs. 55 - 63

Session 2: John Milton

     o   Pgs. 78 - 82

Session 3: Lady Mary Wroth; George Herbert

     o   Pgs. 74 – 77

 

April 8

Class #4

The Sonnet According to the Romantics

  • Session 1: William Wordsworth Pgs. 89-94
    • Focus on: 
      • “Nuns fret not…” pg. 89. 
      • “London, 1802,” pg. 92
      • Surprised by Joy . . . impatient as the wind” pg. 93
  • Session 2: John Keats Pgs. 109-114
    • Focus on: 
      • "On the Grasshopper and the Cricket” pg. 111 
      • “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” pg. 109
  • Session 3: Percy Bysshe Shelley, 


 

Session 1: Gerard Manley Hopkins: pgs. 144-151

Session 2: William Butler Yeats, pgs. 155 - 158

  • Focus on:
    • “Leda and the Swan” pg. 157
    • "The Fascination of What’s Difficult” pg. 155
    • "All Things Can Tempt Me” click here

Session 3: Dante Gabriel Rossetti & Christina Rossetti

  • Dante Gabriel Rossetti, pgs. 134 - 136
    • Fccus on “Silent Noon” pg. 135
  • Christina Rossetti, pgs. 137 - 138
    • Focus on “Rest” pg. 136;  “Remember” click here.

 

 

April 22

Class #6

African American Sonneteers

  • Session 1: Gwendolyn Brooks, pgs. 226 - 229
    • Focus on:  
      • "Gay Chaps at the Bar" pg. 227 
      • "Piano After War" pg. 228 

Countee Cullin, Pgs. 207

  • Session 2: Countee Cullen, pg. 207
    • “Yet Do I Marvel” pg. 207
    • “At the Wailing Wall in Jerusalm” pg. 207
  • Session 3: Robert Hayden, pg. 219
    • Focus on:  
      • “Those Winter Sundays” pg. 219
      • “Frederick Douglass” pg. 219

 

April 29

Class #7

Other American Sonneteers

  • Session 1: Edna St. Vincent Millay pgs. 183-191
  • Session 2: e.e. cummings,  pgs. 194 – 200
    • Focus on:
      • I carry your heart with me(carry it in,” pg. 200
      • “next to of course god america i,” pg. 199
  • Session 3: Robert Frost, pg. 168 - 173
    • Focus on: 
      • “Mowing” pg. 169  
      • “The Oven Bird” pg. 170  
      • "Design” pg. 172 


 

May 6

Class #8

Modern voices

  • Session 1: W H Auden. Pgs. 210-214
    • Focus on:
      •  "Our Bias"  pg. 211 
      • "The Door” pg. 213
  • Session 2: Robert Lowell. Pgs.  230-232
    • Focus on: 
      • ”Ezra Pound” pg.231
      • “Dolphin” pg. 233
      • "Robert Frost” pg. 231
  • Session 3: Linda: Elizabeth Bishop Pgs. 217 - 218
    • "The Prodigal" pg. 217 
    • “Sonnet" pg. 218 

 

May 13

Class #9

Modern Voices

 

May 20

Class #10

Modern Voices

  • Session 1: Marilyn Nelson, pg. 296-297
  • Session 2: Discussion: The sonnet genre and the sonnet tradition

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© Linda K. Shamoon 2021