The early poetry of T.S. Eliot is examined. Differences between Pound and Eliot, in particular the former's interest in translation versus the latter's in quotation, are suggested. Eliot's relationship to tradition is considered in his essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent." The early poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is read, with emphasis on the poem's resistance to traditional forms and its complicated depiction of its speaker's fragmentary consciousness.

The lecture introduces the poetry of Ezra Pound. Tensions in Pound's personality and career are considered, particularly in terms of his relationships with other poets and his fascism and anti-capitalism. The poem "The Seafarer" is examined as a quintessentially Poundian project in its treatment and translation of poetic forms. The first Canto of his epic project, The Cantos, is analyzed as a meditation on the process of expressing and engaging with history and literary tradition.

The Imagist school is defined, in part through the prose of Ezra Pound. Representative examples of Imagist poetry are examined, particularly Hilda Doolittle's "Garden," "Sea Rose," and "Oread." Pound's early poem, "In a Station of the Metro," and Pound's comment on the poem's composition are studied as Imagist statements. His work with foreign languages, particularly Chinese, is considered in relation to Imagism in the poems "Jewel Stairs' Grievance" and "River Merchant's Wife: A Letter."

A representative sample of English poetry of World War One is surveyed. War rhetoric and propaganda are examined and challenged in Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Strange Meeting." The relationship between home front and battle front is explored in Thomas Hardy's "Channel Firing," "In the Time of 'the Breaking of Nations,'" and "I Looked up From My Writing"; Edward Thomas's "Adlestrop"; and Siegfried Sassoon's "'Blighters.'" Isaac Rosenberg's "Louse Hunting" is discussed as a poem of ordinary experience in the trenches.

Yeats's late poetry is discussed and interpreted. The poet's interest in human knowledge and its relationship to the body, particularly the aging body, is traced from "Leda and the Swan" to "Sailing to Byzantium," "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz," "Two Songs from a Play," and "Vacillation." Yeats's late interest in the experiences of joy, madness, and "gaiety" is examined in "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop." Yeats's de-mystifying attitude toward art in "The Circus Animals' Destruction" is contrasted with his celebration of art in "Lapis Lazuli."

Yeats's middle period is explored, beginning with the middle-aged Yeats's assumption of the role of spokesman for Irish nationalism and the development of his complicated response to nationalist violence. The aestheticization of violence is considered in the poem "Easter, 1916" and briefly in "The Statues." Yeats's conception of the relationship of violence to history, with particular emphasis on the frightening interaction among the divine, the human, and the bestial, is demonstrated in the visionary poems "The Second Coming" and "The Magi," and finally in "Leda and the Swan."

The early poetry of William Butler Yeats is read and interpreted with particular attention paid to Yeats's ambitions as a specifically Irish poet.  Yeats's commitment to a poetry of symbol is explored in "The Song of the Wandering Aengus," a fable of poetic vocation. "A Coat," composed at the end of Yeats's struggle to bring about an Irish national theater, shows the poet reconceiving his style and in search of a new audience. "The Fisherman" is read as a revision of "The Song of the Wandering Aengus" which reflects this new set of concerns.

In this second lecture on the poetry of Robert Frost, the poet's use of iambic pentameter in "Birches" is discussed.  Frost's anti-modernity is evidenced in his interest in rural New England culture and his concern with the lives of laborers in "Home Burial."  The failure of humanity to work real change is sardonically depicted in "Provide, Provide," but a hopeful vision of the power of imagination is presented in the final lines of the late poem, "Directive."

The poetry and life of Robert Frost are characterized in opposition to the works of nineteenth-century poets and Modernists Eliot and Pound.  Frost's poetic project, how he positions himself among his contemporaries, his poetics of work, and his concept of "the sound of sense" are discussed.  The poems "Mowing" and "'Out, Out--'" are interpreted, and the tensions between vernacular language and poetic form that they showcase are explored.

Professor Hammer introduces students to the material that will be covered in the course of the semester. Course readings and requirements are also addressed. Early publications of poems are discussed as they appeared in small magazines such as Blast, Broom, and The Criterion. Book publication of the same poems and other poetry collections are then discussed in contrast.