OLLI101655 - American Poetry from the 20th Century to Present [In person at Ambler]
Course Description
AMERICAN POETRY FROM THE 20TH CENTURY TO PRESENT
Instructor: Jerry Burnsteel
Day of Week: Wednesday
Dates: February 5 – April 9 (No class on March 5)
Time: 9:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m.
Location: In-person at Ambler
This course considers a wide range of poetry originally written in English, and primarily American, from the 20th century and somewhat into the present 21st century. Classroom presentations will be a combination of readings and discussions of the poetry. There will be some time given to a consideration of the nature of poetry—what is it? how did it come about? what is its value?—so that there also will be mentions of the oral tradition from earlier centuries and the consequent development of written poetry through to the present. So, yes, Homer and Sappho and Shakespeare will make appearances, but not lengthy ones. A smattering of the poets whose work will carry the weight and focus of the class are the Imagists and the early Moderns, W C Williams, Wallace Stevens, T S Eliot and W H Auden; Galway Kinnell, Stanley Kunitz, Carolyn Forché, and Louise Glück; the Pre-Raphaelite D G Rossetti. Individual poems will be available as course resources.
Maximum: 15
Instructor Bio: Jerry Burnsteel has a BA in English (Penn State) and his MA and PhD in English/Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University in NW Ohio. As an Assistant Professor of English there he taught English Comp, Latin Poetry in Translation, and writing in the English Honors Program. He taught a variety of literature and writing classes at community and undergraduate colleges in Michigan and Pennsylvania. He was an Adjunct Professor of English at Penn State Ogontz (now Abington) and was a Lecturer at the Harvard Business School in Boston, MA where he taught Management Communication to prospective MBA students. He was an Army officer during the Vietnam era. Among his duties, he taught writing to enlisted persons and senior officers.
Notes
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