ENLT 2523

This class can be used for a second writing requirement, but I'm warning you now, TAKE SOMETHING/SOMEONE ELSE. Professor Davis is a very fun guy and really knows his stuff about poetry and his classes are super intriguing if you pay attention. His seminars are alright and the writing seems easy enough because for each class you only write a one page response to the selection of poems you read the night before. However, his insane love for poetry turned out to be a huge negative for this class. He's not open to different styles of writing and he will grade you very harshly for not writing his way, especially on major papers. There are only 2 major papers, so if you bomb the first, it is a must that you do well on the second, as it can drop you an entire letter grade. There is a pretty easy poetry memorization assignment where you only need to memorize and recite 14 lines of a poem, so it's an easy A as long as you can explain the poem's meaning in detail. And then there's the final. Holy cow, the final. We had to memorize every single poem that we read over the semester in some way (100 poems!) and be able to identify the authors of 30 different poems just from reading 30 small excerpts that Professor Davis put on the exam. Mind you, some of the poems we read this semester were 10 pages/300 lines long, and you had to be able to identify the author from a 15 line excerpt. That final was absolute madness and I ended up studying for it more than all of my classes combined, including chemistry! Save yourself now while you still can! Avoid this class!!!

Mr. Davis was a great professor! I took his class on The Sonnet, and he gave great feedback on papers and was obviously really passionate about the topic. Class was discussion-based and always interesting and lively, and was a productive environment to understand potential meanings of poems. We had 4 main grades through the semester: a 30 min sonnet recitation and analysis, along with 3 papers analyzing sonnets. The papers could be any length, but were usually around 4-6 pages. There were also small grades for poetry scansion. The final exam wasn't too bad as long as you paid attention in class throughout the semester, which is pretty hard not to do in such a small class. I definitely recommend this class to anyone who is interested in poetry and wants to get their 2nd writing requirement out of the way!

Professor Davis is a FANTASTIC teacher! His class is interesting, but requires a lot of work and participation. Any negative reviews are likely based on perceptions of those who may not have completed all the readings or did not actively participate in class. His grading scale is hard, and he expects high-quality writing, but he is open to people expressing their opinions so long as they are backed up by facts from the text. I did not like poetry when I first walked into the classroom, but left on the last day feeling cultured and well-educated and experiencing a newfound appreciation for the art. I cannot recommend Professor Davis and this class highly enough.