CRI Literature: Poetry   

This poetry course will focus on and emphasize the role of “spirituality” in poems from around the world. We’ll examine how poetry is ideally suited to express what is “heartfelt” in life, and in so doing, reveal how beautiful verse can enable the “burnishing of one’s soul.” We’ll examine themes such as joy, grief, longing, loss, mindfulness, imagination, and love of nature. Some of the poets we’ll consider are Emily Dickinson, Rumi, William Blake, Hafez, Rilke, Kabir, Li Po, Goethe, Yeats, William Stafford, Wallace Stevens, and Mary Oliver. The text for this class is “The Soul is Here for its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures,” edited by Robert Bly.

In this course, we will read a sampling of some of the best English verse written in the years leading up to the English Civil War, including some of  the “Metaphysicals” (Donne, Herbert), the “Sons of Ben” (Jonson, Herrick), the Cavaliers (Suckling, Lovelace), and that most un-Puritanical Puritan, Andrew Marvell. A course reader will be provided by the instructor at least one week before the first meeting.