Carol A. Stephen

This week my challenge was to start a 10-week course through Coursera

on Modern and Contemporary American Poetry given through the University of Pennsylvania. (ModPoPenn). This is a free course offered via a MOOC platform, or Massive Open Online Course.

Why massive? Well, there are more than 20,000 registered students. Yes, that’s right. Twenty thousand.

I had read about this back sometime in the early summer, and it sounded like a good course that would fill in the many gaps I have in my knowledge of American Poetry. I’ve heard of various schools like the Language Poets, the Post-Moderns, the Experimental.

But I wasn’t clear on what those were, or who belonged to which group.A week in now, and it has been wonderful, amazing, somewhat overwhelming. The number of discussions and posts going on make it hard to know where to focus, but I think I have a better idea how things will go from now on. Certainly I can’t read or respond to every post. So I will have to choose among them.

Already I have learned yet another term, proto-modernists, as we study Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

and Walt Whitman. They are leading us into

Steel engraving of Walt Whitman. Published in 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Modern Poetry. In spite of how well-known these poets are, I have to admit to not reading them before. So it is interesting to read two different poets, both of whom were moving away from what was then the popular approach to writing poetry.

Thanks to Professor Al Filreis and the TA’s who are looking after us and guiding us along through the maze of the MOOC and the labyrinths of these two amazing poets!

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• Modern & Contemporary American Poetry | Coursera (electricbohemian.wordpress.com)