Both Robert Frost and e.e. cummings had roots in New England and were contemporaries in early to mid-twentieth-century America. But what a contrast in their poetry! They saw the world through very different eyes and projected quite individual images and attitudes, not to mention differing lyric styles. Nature was important for both, but look at "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" and "i thank You God for most this amazing day" as examples.
Frost was a traditional formalist (quatrains, sonnets, blank verse), cummings an iconoclastic experimentalist who overturned conventions of punctuation, capitalization, spelling and diction to make his points. Frost was at home in fields and forests and farmland. Cummings became involved in political issues and protests, often with satire and harsh criticism.
We'll divide the 6 sessions between them. I'll expect careful reading of the poems in advance.
Course Recordings: (Click on the links below to watch the recordings.)