Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. These great poets are the foundation of the tradition of all (north) American poetry, of whatever cultural origin or sexual orientation, black, brown, white, gay, straight, both, neither, unsure. We'll look closely at particular poems week by week (texts will be mentioned and circulated in advance - they won't be nearly as long as for my Milton class!) pondering as we go Tony Tanner's classic The Reign of Wonder (CUP 1965) which makes a fascinating case about the way the imagination responded to a new world and its challenges.