Green Mountain Academy for Lifelong Learning (GMALL) is happy to welcome back Bill Freedman to lead this study of poetry. Poetry by six of the most significant English language poets of the 20th century will be examined in this six-week program. We’ll begin with poems by W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Robert Frost in the first four sessions. The final two sessions will explore poems by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, two of the most powerful exponents of the intimately personal and emotionally raw confessional school of poetry of the 1950s and 60s. The goal of the series is to discover together, with your active participation, the layered, partially hidden richness of their poems. We will search not only for ‘what’ these poems mean, but more importantly for how, through their use of literal and figurative language, imagery, symbols, allusion, sound, rhythm, and meter, they become the uniquely complex, supple, and powerful creations they are. “A poem,” said the poet Archibald MacLeish mysteriously, “should not mean but be.” In the discussions, we will try to figure out at least a little of what and how these extraordinary poems ‘be’, and the effort may make better readers of poetry of us all. Participants will receive biographical information on each poet prior to the start of the series. This class will meet on six consecutive Mondays beginning February 27 and ending on April 3. Registration is $90 for all six classes. For more information or to register, please call 802-867-0111 or visit our website at greenmtnacademy.org.