Overview: This lecture presents the early poetry of W.H. Auden. In "From the Very First Coming Down," Auden's relationship to the reader is considered, as well as the role of economy, truth, and morality in his poetics. The political Auden is examined in "Spain" and "September 1, 1939," along with his later practice of revising controversial poems. Finally, his interest in traditional forms, his vision of love, and his characteristic perspectivism, are explored in "This Lunar Beauty" and "As I Walked Out One Evening."

1. Introduction to Modern English Poetry
2. The Poetry and Life of Robert Frost
3. Robert Frost: Birches, Home Burial, "Provide, Provide" and DIrective
4. William Butler Yeats' Early Poetry
5. William Butler Yeats' Middle Period
6. William Butler Yeats' Late Poetry
7. World War I Poetry in England
8. Imagism: Doolittle and Pound
9. The Poetry of Ezra Pound
10. T.S. Eliot's Early Poetry
11. T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
12. T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land
13. Hart Crane's Early Poetry
14. Hart Crane's "The Bridge"
15. Langston Hughes
16. William Carlos Williams
17. Marianne Moore
18. Analysis of Marianne Moore's poems
19. Wallace Stevens' works
20. Wallace Stevens' "The Auroras of Autumn"
21. Wallace Stevens' Late Poetry
22. W.H. Auden's Early Poetry
23. Analysis of W.H. Auden's poems
24. Elizabeth Bishop's early poetry
25. Elizabeth Bishop's modernist work

This course covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Diverse methods of literary criticism are employed, such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism.