This course focuses on the close intertwining of visual arts and poetry in the 20th 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 study the rich cross-pollination between word and image in the work of Italian Futurists, Russian Cubo-Futurists, Dada and Surrealist artists, all the way to The New York School of the 1940s and 50s and the international Concrete poetry of the 1960s. 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 class meets once a week for a double session and includes three additional events, such as museum visits and guest lectures by museum curators and poets. Students will be responsible for two in class presentations of assigned readings, a short midterm paper and a final individual research project that will be presented in class and submitted as a paper. This course can satisfy an Arts program LINA (Interdisciplinary Arts) requirement, or a Visual Studies elective requirement.