Poetry of Desire

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

What do poets want? Love, sex, fame, peace—sometimes just a good meal. Whatever poets desire, the power of desire itself generates much of their best work. This class explores the poetry of desire from a wide range of cultures and contexts. We’ll read poems of sex and seduction from ancient Greece, medieval Persia, postwar England, and the contemporary United States, as well as poems that broaden our sense of what we desire and how. We’ll investigate the range of poetic expressions that desire can produce, from envy and despair to ecstasy and joy. Poets on the syllabus will include Sappho, Rumi, Browning, Larkin, Hughes, Williams, Ginsberg, O’Hara, Myles, Giovanni, Gunning, and others.