In this shimmering conversation (the outgrowth of an event co-sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History and Poets House), Edward O. Wilson, renowned scientist and proponent of “consilience” or the unity of knowledge, finds an ardent interlocutor in Robert Hass, whose credo as United States poet laureate was “imagination makes communities.” As they explore the many ways that poetry and science enhance each other, they travel from anthills to ancient Egypt and to the heights and depths of human potential.
Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary
Marjorie Perloff, among our foremost critics of twentieth-century poetry, argues that Ludwig Wittgenstein provided writers with a radical new aesthetic, a key to recognizing the inescapable strangeness of ordinary language. Taking seriously Wittgenstein's remark that "philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry," Perloff begins by discussing Wittgenstein the "poet." What we learn is that the poetics of everyday life is anything but banal.
A good poetry idea should help the children feel excited about writing and enable them to think of what to write - developing their imagination, creativity and writing skills. Jumpstart! Poetry is about involving children as creative writers through writing poems. The book contains a bank of ideas that can be drawn upon when teaching poetry but also at other times to provide a source for creative writing that children relish. There are more than 100 quick warm-ups to fire the brain into a creative mood and to ‘jumpstart’ reading, writing and performing poetry in any key stage 1 or 2 classroom.
(12 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture) Course No. 305 Taught by Seth Lerer Stanford University Ph.D., University of Chicago This lecture series examines the life and work of this English poet in order to understand the richness and depth of his poetry, its ways of representing 17th-century English life and culture, and its impact on later writers and on English literary history as a whole.