Poets have engaged, often in a most beautiful way, with the common human experience of standing or walking beside the sea. Most of the poems that we will look at are prized within the canon and familiar to us, but the task of the course will be to closely read them, to seek their meaning and understand their form. We will consider, in particular, how poets have used the sea as an image of mystery, fear, death, freedom and infinity and the shore as a liminal site of both human constraint and illumination. Importantly, the sea is not a river. The poems to be discussed are usually readily available online, for reading ahead of the class meeting, but they will also be on the screen in each class. No book purchase will be necessary.