Modern American Poetry

The improvised round-table discussions of meta-poems by Dickinson, Stevens and Mullen (module 4, lesson 4) initially seemed too colloquial and not incisive, but then I realized they had value as models for how to grope into an initial understanding of a strange poem.

Secondly, the transcripts are in rich text, which is basically unreadable, has no line breaks, which makes reading the poems impossible, and the transcripts are poorly transcribed, making them illiterate.I feel I may not continue with the course for these reasons, even though the content is really interesting.This is the worst presented MOOC I have encountered.....I have completed 6, and am undertaking another 2, with edxcel and with futurelearn This course was challanging and I loved it I'm interested in the good, the beautiful, and the true.

As a whole, the course managed a satisfying balance between discussion of the poetry itself and discussion of the social and economic contexts in which the poetry was created and consumed.

Great Lectures, big content, high academic level But...Lectures are deeply dull: all but 5 or 6 (on nearly 70) are long static videos of a lecturer speaking like he/she is reading, sometimes even robot-like speeches, no cacthy at all.

Very high on generalities and low on details - like detailed readings of individual poems.

I especially appreciated the clarity of Karen Ford's many lectures and Tim Newcomb's lively and enthusiastic investigation of the role of little magazines in the 1910s & 1920s.

But some of the content was really interesting for me--I was glad to see Hart Crane and Muriel Rukeyser not being slighted as so often happens, and the section on American Indian poetry in the first part of the 19th and early 20th century was a real eye-opener and worth the effort of the entire course on its own.

In lesson one, this was repeated 11 times.

Although I'm only the first week, there are two main comments I'd like to make.Firstly, why are the lectures sub-divided with the ridiculous, overlong, and irritating introduction for each section.