What this course is all about
What makes this Journey Through Poetry different from other courses? It’s different because it doesn’t teach you anything you don’t already know — it just helps you get in touch with things you’ve known all along. It will change the way you look at poetry, and that will change your life!
“Journey through Poetry” is an entertaining and practical introduction to the pleasure of poetry, designed to help people to approach poetry with a positive mindset. As William Carlos Williams said, “If it ain’t a pleasure, it ain’t a poem.”
Instead of trying to understand what other people think about poetry, or a specific poem, why not develop your confidence in your own understanding? Literature is not about what it “means”; it’s about what it means *to you*. In this series I work on a set of tools – techniques that you can apply – in order to approach poetry in your own way.
I hope you will stay the course and watch the complete series, and that you will find it both enjoyable and instructive. If poetry has a place in your life, I am sure your life will feel richer and more satisfying.
I am a retired professor of the Department of English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo, and these videos reflect the many things I taught to my students over the years.