# Poetry

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Category: Literature
Slides: 29
Updated: 2026-05-15T22:18:36.323Z
Tags: literature, poetry

## Summary

The single fact that distinguishes poetry from prose is the line. Where a sentence ends because a thought is finished, a line ends because the poet has decided so. That decision is the form. Key sections include: Po e try.; Opening The line, not the sentence.; I · Definition What a poem is.; II · Origins Before the page.; III The alliterative line.; IV Dante & the Commedia.; V The sonnet.; VI The English Romantics.; VII Whitman, & the long American line.; VIII Dickinson, & compression..

## Slide Outline

1. Po e try.
2. Opening The line, not the sentence.
3. I · Definition What a poem is.
4. II · Origins Before the page.
5. III The alliterative line.
6. IV Dante & the Commedia.
7. V The sonnet.
8. VI The English Romantics.
9. VII Whitman, & the long American line.
10. VIII Dickinson, & compression.
11. IX Yeats & the modernizing tradition.
12. X Eliot & The Waste Land.
13. XI The Modernists abroad.
14. XII The New York School.
15. XIII The confessional poets.
16. XIV Black American poetry.
17. XV Heaney & the Irish line.
18. XVI Eastern European poetry.
19. XVII The Asian traditions.
20. XVIII Forms in detail.
21. XIX How free verse works.
22. XX Prose poetry & the boundary.
23. XXI Translation.
24. XXII Reading aloud.
25. XXIII Now.
26. XXIV Thirty poems.
27. XXV The shelf of anthologies.
28. XXVI Where to go next.
29. The end of the deck.

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