Starting in August, I’ll be teaching a section for UC Davis’ English Department. The class is called “Love and Desire in Contemporary Poetry” (a regularly offered course at UCD). My reading list:
- Collected Poems, 1947-1997, Allen Ginsberg
- The Dream of a Common Language, Adrienne Rich
- Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons, Marilyn Hacker
- Blonde on Blonde / Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan
- Stag’s Leap, Sharon Olds
- Thrall, Natasha Trethewey
- Slow Lightning , Eduardo Corral
- Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, Patricia Lockwood
I think Day 1 will cover bits of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and “Calamus,” some of H.D.’s Trilogy, Robert Lowell’s “Skunk Hour,” W. C. Handy’s “Careless Love,” and Prince’s “Little Red Corvette”–all referenced in works by the poets listed above.
Nathaniel Williams 