This course offers an introduction to reading and writing about modern poetry in English. At the heart of the course is the practice of close reading—learning to pay careful attention to words, sound, and form—but we will also work to situate these poems in their literary, social, and historical contexts. Students will develop the skills to make sense of so-called “difficult” poetry and discover why that difficulty is so often worth the effort. Poets covered may include Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Mina Loy, Wallace Stevens, W.H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Hart Crane, and Gwendolyn Brooks.