SEMINAR PROFILE

H16 -
The Aim Was Song: The Poetry of Robert Frost and Mary Oliver

Frost and Oliver all write poems that present explicit truth claims, moral instructions, and general observations about reality, Both poets write in varieties of traditional verse forms, the sonic, rhythmic patterns that make the claims, instructions, and observations of their poems kinds of "song." How can "songs" also be "truths," how can the delight of imaginative forms offer the utility of knowledge gained through reasoned inquiry? How, as Keats so confidently put it, can Beauty be Truth? This riddle is tucked into the word "aim" in Frost's poem entitled, "The Aim Was Song," We will try to see how each poet deals with that riddle, especially how they rely on natural settings and the pastoral tradition in lyric poetry to make truth and beauty rhymes

Scholar:

Theo Theoharis

Location:

Harvard Hillel

Dates:

3/14/2016, 3/24/2016

H16 -	The Aim Was Song: The Poetry of Robert Frost and Mary Oliver

	Frost and Oliver all write poems that present explicit truth claims, moral instructions, and general observations about reality, Both poets write in varieties of traditional verse forms, the sonic, rhythmic patterns that make the claims, instructions, and observations of their poems kinds of "song." How can "songs" also be "truths," how can the delight of imaginative forms offer the utility of knowledge gained through reasoned inquiry? How, as Keats so confidently put it, can Beauty be Truth? This riddle is tucked into the word "aim" in Frost's poem entitled, "The Aim Was Song," We will try to see how each poet deals with that riddle, especially how they rely on natural settings and the pastoral tradition in lyric poetry to make truth and beauty rhymes

		Scholar:	Theo Theoharis
		Location:	Harvard Hillel
		Dates:	3/14/2016, 3/24/2016