It is not uncommon for students to encounter obstacles while reading poetry. It is not uncommon for professors to assume students readily have sufficient knowledge on properly close reading poetry. This course exists because formally studying verse largely enhances one’s ability to think critically about poetry in general and in an academic setting, where you students are often asked to analyze various types of texts. Therefore, it was designed to benefit students academically and to contribute to their abilities of closely reading poetry (no matter how scary it might seem). This course aims to make sense of chaotic scenes coded in verse, through the otherwise controlled aspects of a poem. These controlled aspects, or the formal elements in poetry, are at the core of this course. This class aims to identify such elements in a poem, which in turn provide ample insight to the its meaning and message. The class will aid and assist students in the process of linguistically analyzing verse to make sense of a poem’s significance. This act of close reading poetry is a driving force behind the course. Overall, this course aims to: delineate these formal elements of poetry, define key terms and major poetic devices, and demonstrate proper skills for understanding and close reading verse. There are no exams in the course, but there are short answer/essay response weekly writing assignments. Considering we only have one short hour together once a week, attendance will be mandatory.