W.H. Auden would later regret his words "For poetry makes nothing happen," in his 1939 poem "In Memory of W.B. Yeats." Poetry not only makes things happen; it is itself a way of happening—always ongoing, renewed, endless. In this class, we will be reading poems in English (the earliest in translation) from many centuries and cultures, and examining ways in which poetry and poetics can preserve and promulgate power—as well as ways in which they can sabotage and subvert power and its structures. The focus in our class will be on close reading and the valence of individual words and phrases in the context of a larger theme: how one word, one alliteration can have immense influence and become unforgettable to a reader. Both epic and lyric poetry are of significant importance. Sample texts include: Sappho, Deathless Aphrodite of the Spangled Mind; Aristotle, Poetics; selected English Renaissance sonnets; Phillis Wheatley, On Imagination; Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, Lament for Art O'Leary; Civil War and World War I lyric poems and songs; Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again; Dolly Parton, Down From Dover.