This course focuses on the close intertwining of visual arts and poetry in the early twentieth century and the ways in which visual and verbal languages informed and enriched each other in a wide range of avant-garde artistic practices in Europe and the United States. We will examine connections between the poetics of Stephane Mallarmé and Guillaume Apollinaire and the innovations of Cubism and several models of pictorial abstraction. We will also study the rich cross-pollination between word and image in the work of the Italian Futurists, Russian Cubo-Futurists, American modernists, Dada and Surrealist artists, all the way to Fluxus events and Concrete poetry of the 1950s and 60s. Students will consider ways in which the intermeshing of visual and verbal registers opened new creative possibilities and mutually enriched poetry and visual arts in ways that are still relevant today. The course includes visits to museums and poetry readings along with class presentations of assigned readings, a midterm paper, and a final research paper.