This course draws from the acclaimed Poetry in America PBS series. Beginning with the poetry of the American Civil War and the series of major events and social movements that followed it, we read such poets as Herman Melville, Julia Ward Howe, Walt Whitman, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, and Emma Lazarus, and examine the language of patriotism, pride, violence, loss, and memory inspired by the nation’s greatest conflict.