WEEK 1: INTRODUCTIONS
Special Guests.
READINGS: Introduction to the Anthology: Karl Kirchwey, “A Poet’s Roman Baedeker.”
Versions of Du Bellay’s sonnet no. 3: Ezra Pound, “Rome”; Robert Lowell, “Rome in the 16th Century”; Seamus Heaney, “Du Bellay in Rome”; de Quevedo, “Rome buried.”
Charles Wright, “Roma I.” Rosanna Warren, “What Leaves.”
Elizabeth Jennings, “Fountain.” James Wright, “The Vestal in the Forum.”
ASSIGNMENT: Write and workshop 2 poems based on readings and your experiences in Rome. Option: attempt a sonnet.
WEEK 2: CIMITERO ACATTOLICO/“The Protestant Cemetery”
Guided site visit.
READINGS: Thomas Hardy, “Rome: at the Pyramid”; Shelley, stanzas from “Adonais”; Christina Rossetti, “On Keats”; Oscar Wilde, “The Grave of Keats” and “The Grave of Shelley”; James Wright, “In View of the Protestant Cemetery”
ASSIGNMENT: Write and workshop 2 poems based on readings and your experiences in Rome. Option: attempt an elegy.
WEEK 3: THE KEATS-SHELLEY HOUSE
Guided site visit.
READINGS: Stella Gibbons, “Writ in Water”; John Keats, “This Living Hand”; David Constantine, “26 Piazza di Spagna”; Jorie Graham, “Scirocco”; Richard Wilbur, “Piazza di Spagna, Early Morning”; Hawley Truax, “The Spanish Steps.”
ASSIGNMENT: Write and workshop 2 poems based on readings and your experiences in Rome. Option: attempt a poem that reflects Romanticism in some way.
WEEK 4: CAMPO DE’ FIORI
Guided site visit.
READINGS: Czeslaw Milosz, “Campo dei Fiori”; Heather McHugh, “What He Thought”; Swinburne, “The Monument of Giordano Bruno”; Moira Egan, “Campo de’ Fiori”; Richard Kenney, “At the Pteranodon Baths.”
ASSIGNMENT: Write and workshop 2 poems based on readings and your experiences in Rome. Option: attempt a poem based on a historical figure.
WEEK 5: ART & CHURCHES
Guided tour of selected churches.
READINGS: Richard Kenney, “Imaginative Literature 101”; Hannah Sanghee Park, “Galleria Borghese”; Elizabeth Jennings, “Caravaggio’s ‘Narcissus’ in Rome:; Peter Riley, “S. Cecilia in Trastevere”; F.T. Prince, “San Luigi dei Francesi”; Thom Gunn, “In Santa Maria del Popolo.”
ASSIGNMENT: Write and workshop 2 poems based on readings and your experiences in Rome. Option: write an ekphrastic poem based on artwork you have seen.
FINAL PORTFOLIO. FINAL WORKSHOP DISCUSSIONS. FAREWELLS.
Supplemental readings, videos, and podcasts will be provided. The idea is to use Rome as Muse, as students explore the city both in person and through Rome-inspired poems, written by poets who have been here before.