S25-01 Reading Great Poems about Being Old, the End of This Life, and Visions of the Afterlife.
Class | Registration opens 3/3/2025 9:00 AM
We will read some great poems about being old, the end of this life, and visions of the afterlife, such as: “An Old Man's Winter Night” by Robert Frost; “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas; “The Wild Iris” by Louise Glück; “That Time of Year Thou May’st in Me Behold” by Shakespeare; “I Died for Beauty” by Emily Dickinson; Wordworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” ode; and William Blake’s “Eternity” (“He who binds to himself a joy/Does the winged life destroy/He who kisses the joy as it flies/Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”). Also, Walt Whitman’s giddy lines from Song of Myself: “Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? / I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.”
We will read some great poems about being old, the end of this life, and visions of the afterlife, such as: “An Old Man's Winter Night” by Robert Frost; “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas; “The Wild Iris” by Louise Glück; “That Time of Year Thou May’st in Me Behold” by Shakespeare; “I Died for Beauty” by Emily Dickinson; Wordworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” ode; and William Blake’s “Eternity” (“He who binds to himself a joy/Does the winged life destroy/He who kisses the joy as it flies/Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”). Also, Walt Whitman’s giddy lines from Song of Myself: “Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? / I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it.”
Don Barkin MA
Don Barkin received his BA from Harvard College and his MA. in English literature from Cambridge U. He has taught undergraduate seminars in poetry and prose writing at Yale for several years, and at Wesleyan's Graduate Liberal Studies Program. He has published three books of poems that have also appeared in national magazines, and is a former schoolteacher and newspaper reporter