LIT 5038 - Spring 2026 - Kimbrell

We will consider a long history of debut volumes by American poets beginning with Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass, 1855) and ending with Ocean Vuong (Night Sky with Exit Wounds, 2016). We will pay close attention to the arrangement of each collection and to the modulations between poems and sections, the thematic concerns and progressions, the constellations of approach and perspective that make a collection more than just a random gathering. We will also consider a selection of reviews and essays for critical and historical context. Our reading will include but will not be limited to the following first books:
• Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016)
• Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars (2011)
• Richard Siken, Crush (2005)
• Jay Hopler, Green Squall (2006)
• David Berman, Actual Air (1999)
• Judy Jordan, Carolina Ghost Woods (1999)
• Ai, Cruelty (1973)
• Etheridge Knight, Poems from Prison (1968)
• Sylvia Plath, The Colossus (1960)
• John Ashbery, Some Trees (1956)
• Elizabeth Bishop, North & South (1946)
• W.D. Snodgrass, Heart’s Needle (1959)
• Margaret Walker, For My People (1942)
• Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923)
• Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues (1925)
• Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

Requirements: This course satisfies the requirement for coursework in the following Areas of Concentration: Post-1900 Literary and Cultural Studies (American); a Literary Genre (Poetry).