Thought you might like to know that Yale University is offering some of its courses online - for free! Among the modules on offer is a course in Modern Poetry taught by Professor Langdon Hammer (left) which covers :... the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of World War One, Imagism, and the Harlem Renaissance. Diverse methods of literary criticism are employed, such as historical, biographical, and gender criticism.The lecturers are on video and archived so you can progress through them at your own pace. (Initially the lectures went out live, twice a week.) Much of the course material is downloadable and you can buy the recommended text, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry. Vol. 1, Modern Poetry second-hand at Abebooks.com.
Update :
Chet alerted me to MIT's courses online. I like the sound of the ones on reading and writing the short story, and on writing and reading the poem.
Heaven's ... now I start looking there's even more out there! About.com lists some free writing and journalism courses, among them Steve Barnes Lifewriting class which he teaches at UCLA.
Then there's F2K, Bob Hembree's free fiction writing course which is offered 6 times a year.
Any more free literature or writing classes that anyone knows about?
Update 2:
Chet found another amazing source of free courses - the UK Open University's Learning Space. Among the courses on offer What is Poetry?, Start Writing Fiction, Approaching Poetry, Approaching Prose Fiction.
