Allen Ginsberg, Basic Poetics, Part 3, 1980 January 7

A Basic Poetics class taught by Allen Ginsberg in 1980 at Naropa. In this class he continues his discussion of Old English poetry stressing this time the alliterative aspects of the verse. Also included is Old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse such as "Beowulf" and "Sir Gwain and the Green Knight." He then shifts into "The Age of Anxiety" by W. H. Auden and "Hasbrouck and the Rose" by Phelps Putnam. He reads and discusses Geoffrey Chaucer's "Merciless Beauty" in conjunction with Ezra Pound's "Canto 81." After discussing alliteration and other aspects of verse, he reads and discusses Pound's translation of "The Seafarer." He reads three different versions of Langland Piers' "Plowman."