459 The Poem as Experience
Literature | This program is completed
The Poem as Experience is reading (not writing) poetry. The participants will each receive a PDF copy of the poem by email. We will read the poem together in silence for ten minutes, followed by a discussion, using a technique of personal sharing which will be explained in detail. We will usually read one poem per session. Class members may send a poem via email for reading in later sessions of the class. Foreign language and scripture texts are encouraged. This class works even better on ZOOM than it did in person.
Most (though not all) poems read will be from the latter 19th or earlier 20th century. Poets have included G. M. Hopkins, Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wallace Stevens, E. E. Cummings, Frederico García Lorca, Dylan Thomas, Margaret Atwood, Sidney Lanier, Robert Browning, and John Keats.
Bob Richmond
Robert Richmond invented this reading format and has taught it a number of times in a Quaker setting though it has no religious content. He has taught this course seven times at ORICL. He is a retired physician. He majored in German (would have been later called “comparative literature”) at Harvard in the late 1950s. He has read and studied a great deal of poetry since his years in college.