ANNOUNCING THE NEW SEASON OF
PROFESSOR’S CORNER: AN ONLINE LITERARY DISCUSSION GROUP
THEME: ECOPOETRY
SUMMER AND FALL 2023
Professor’s Corner: A Literary Discussion Group is an online book club sponsored by the Denton Public Library. It meets monthly via Zoom and is open to the public. The producer and discussion leader is Dr. Stephen Souris, a retired English professor.
From producer and discussion leader, Dr. Stephen Souris
We are delighted to announce the theme of ecopoetry for the next series of Professor's Corner meetings. Simply put, ecopoetry refers to poetry about nature and the environment. More precisely, the poems we'll be discussing range from traditional poems affirming the beauty of nature to poems expressing a concern for the environment to poems questioning what it means for humans to exist in relation with the other-than-human world. Given the never-ending news these days about the consequences of climate change, we decided on ecopoetry as our theme.
Our source material for all meetings will come from, The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2020 [revised edition]), edited by Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street. (2020 or 2013 edition may be used.) In it, iconic American poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are followed by more modern poets like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and even more recent foundational work by poets like Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, and Muriel Rukeyser.
The front matter that appears in the both editions of The Ecopoetry Anthology (editors’ preface, essays by each editor separately, and an introduction by U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass) provides extensive background information on ecopoetry. Reading that material is recommended but not necessary for participating in the discussions.
As we read chronologically through the volume, we will explore: poems about nature (where nature is both subject matter and inspiration), poems about the environment (involving active and politicized environmentalism), and poems about ecology (including a questioning of poetic form as well as the notion of a singular, coherent egocentric self, separated from the other-than-human). Although we'll discuss the poems within the broad context of "ecopoetry," our focus will be on the individual poems as works of literature.
Purchasing The Ecopoetry Anthology is highly recommended but not required for participation. The book is available relatively inexpensively, or you can check your local library (the Denton Public Library has a copy of the anthology at each of its three branches). Please note: many of the poems discussed are available online and can be accessed via The Professor's Corner Facebook Page.
Dates for the next series of Zoom meetings
(Mondays at 7:00 p.m.)
July 24
August 28
September 25
October 23
Meeting-specific information (Zoom link, poems list, etc.) is provided via the Denton Public Library’s mailing list for Professor’s Corner. To subscribe to that list, e-mail ProfessorsCornerDPL@gmail.com and request to be added. For further information, contact the Professor’s Corner producer and discussion leader, Dr. Stephen Souris at SSouris2002@yahoo.com or visit The Professor's Corner Facebook Page.
This program is sponsored by the Denton Public Library South Branch and made possible in part by Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Professor's Corner would also like to thank the Denton Record Chronicle and Lone Star Literary Life for providing generous support for the first and second series, respectively; the Texas Women's University Library for providing research support; and Alex Souris for the ecopoetry design.
