Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)

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Below are the top discussions from Reddit that mention this online Coursera course from University of Pennsylvania.

Offered by University of Pennsylvania. ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on ... Enroll for free.

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Taught by
Al Filreis
Kelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House
and 7 more instructors

Offered by
University of Pennsylvania

Reddit Posts and Comments

8 posts • 29 mentions • top 14 shown below

r/Poetry • comment
15 points • AlchemiA

r/https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo

A deep-dive into American Poetry for everyone -- a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry

r/AskLiteraryStudies • comment
8 points • metaleptic

I'd also highly recommend Al Filreis's course Modern & Contemporary American poetry on Coursera. There's a thriving community of people who post weekly responses to prompts, and I've found that the recorded sessions of Filreis and his TAs discussing poems were highly engaging and informative. The "live" course starts in September, that is to say, that's when there will be the largest number of active participants in the forum, but you can always hop in to read the poems and watch the video discussions any time at your leisure. Hope this helps!

r/Poetry • comment
6 points • maedwe

Check out Coursera's ModPo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry). It's freaking awesome.

r/AskLiteraryStudies • comment
6 points • ur_frnd_the_footnote

ModPo, a free online class on Modern American Poetry has a week on Stein (week 4). It might be worth watching some of the discussions on there to get a feel for how she is viewed these days.

r/AskLiteraryStudies • comment
3 points • drjeffy

ModPo is far and away your best option

r/autism • post
3 points • cubejuggler
Recommendation of ModPo, a free MOOC, for those here

This post is adapted from a personal recommendation I made elsewhere on reddit, not exactly cross-posted, but I'm new here and want to observe all the protocols.

I want to recommend a free online poetry class (MOOC) here that runs for ten weeks starting in September called Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo) on the Coursera platform. It isn't a writing class, it is about studying poetry, but it is also about building community, and there are a lot of autism spectrum people involved, including Daniel Bergmann (whom I have met), a profoundly autistic young man of around 20 who is now part of those who help run the class. Another half dozen or so people on the spectrum are also among the staff or community TAs. Do a search for "ModPo" and "autism" to find a bunch of articles about Daniel and some posts from him.

We were both in Philadelphia on the UPenn campus for a live wrap-up event at the end of the class in November, 2012. Daniel can barely speak out loud and mostly communicates in public with a tablet and an aide, usually one of his parents. At one point at this event people were being asked to give a two word summary of what the class had meant to them, and when he was asked for his response he set aside the tablet. This had been the first class he had really been able to fully participate in ever, and his first realization he could excel at anything. People waited patiently for a minute, maybe more, while he managed to speak two words clearly enough to be understood: "not impossible". It was an amazing moment.

r/Poetry • comment
6 points • Peachblossom_ninja

Don't apologise for seeking to understand! Keep pushing till it makes sense to you. ModPo (free online poetry course) has a section on Emily Dickinson and they have very active discussion boards. I think this year's live version of the course is either just finished or close to finishing so there will still be plenty of people around, I'd ask over there as well!

r/streamentry • comment
2 points • kyklon_anarchon

well, may i humbly suggest this course on coursera: https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo

what these guys do with collaborative close reading is amazing.

r/AskLiteraryStudies • comment
2 points • r4bidw0mb4t

Al Filreis's ModPo (on 20th c. American poetry) has been running for a few years now and has a great reputation and large community formed around it: https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo

It's live next in September it looks like, but I think all the course materials are accessible, and they started running off-season mini-courses on smaller topics.

r/AskLiteraryStudies • comment
2 points • rexallconventioneers

I hear good things about the ModPo course over at UPenn: https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo

r/suggestmeabook • comment
1 points • EppieBlack

I recommend taking Modpo and joining the community of modern poetry readers surrounding it https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo

r/IBO • comment
1 points • TemplarKnightIsMyDad

A super useful resource I used for paper 1s is a Coursera in Modern Poetry. Awesome course for learning how to analyse poetry in detail:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo

r/Poetry • comment
1 points • dogtim

Get a notebook. Start with the "automatic writing" aka "morning pages" technique, and just write without stopping or editing for three pages. Do that every morning. Then later on, tell yourself "I have to write a poem a day, even if it's the stupidest fucking poem of all time". And then do that. Pick some of them and show them to trusted readers without hope and without despair. (If at all possible, join a writing group.) Listen to what they say. Ask questions about how it comes off. Revise accordingly. I wrote an essay about getting feedback here. This brutal, iterative process is unfortunately the only way to get better at writing poetry.

Here are a collection of suggestions for learning about poetry. Poetry 180 is crash course in modern poems put together by former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins. It's great. If you buy an anthology you'll be confusingly skimming through it for years. Just do this instead.

Sign up for the ModPo course on Coursera through the University of Pennsylvania. It's free. Besides giving you lots of context for modern styles and techniques and big-name poets, the way it teaches you is through videos of a class giving a close read to a famous poem. This will do WONDERS for your ability to close read -- it's really really helpful to watch other people do it and see all the stuff they pick up on. I'm about four weeks into the course, it's great.

Find some journals you like. Check out this post at the top of the poetry subreddit, because besides being a list of places to submit, it's a great survey of contemporary journals. You can also go on Twitter and follow @emptymirror, and they have a great list of lit journals etc. This will get you up to speed on what people are writing right now.

Once you've done all that, which might take like a year, click on this link. It's a collection of scholarly materials which comprise everything in a contemporary MFA program.