Pleasure comes to us in a variety of forms, but can be understood in basically two ways. There are cultivated pleasures and forbidden fruits. Happiness, of course, is more complicated, since many people are happy as a result of work, toil, struggle, of hardship overcome. This class will focus on poems of cultivated pleasures, of forbidden pleasures, of work related happiness and of mystical happiness. Cultivated pleasures include anything one has to learn about, get good at or get accustomed to; forbidden pleasures are just what they sound like: things people enjoy though they know they shouldn’t do them; work related happiness refers to poems of accomplishment, of the satisfaction of goals met, or hardship survived; mystical happiness refers to poems about spiritual balance, of psychological or emotional health. We will read poems by Philip Levine, Larry Levis, Jack Gilbert, William Butler Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Louise Gluck, Rosanna Warren, Robert Penn Warren, William Shakespeare and John Keats. Each class meeting will involve workshopping your poems, then discussing the class’s subject, and the instructor will also meet with each student individually

Please note: This class or event is hybrid. Some attendees will be in-person and some will attend online. There may be a limited number of in-person seats available. If you are participating online (using Zoom or a similar live platform), students or attendees should have a stable internet connection. Class participants: you should have a computer or device with a webcam and microphone; and your Zoom link will be automatically sent to you after you register. Check your spam box if you don't see it.