FYS 19 Rhythm and Rhetoric: New Formal Poetry
In this course, students will study the various ways that formal poetry is unique in its ability to heighten awareness and shape understanding. Focusing on newly published criticism and poems (including new translations of work by North Korean poet Kim Ok and Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva), we will explore how the cadence of everyday speech and the formal rules of meter, rhyme, and stanza work together to generate a wide range of expressive and rhetorical possibilities. Along the way, students will be given intensive training in academic writing at the college level, with assignments designed to build critical reading and writing skills, including the use of evidence, rhetorical strategies, and matters of form, clarity, and style. Open only to first year frosh.