Sometimes you meet someone who reminds you of someone you already know. It may take a while to see why, but you end up with insight into each of them. Some poets also remind you of one another, even poets centuries apart. Reading them in pairs may help you to penetrate them.

Among the poets we’ll read in pairs are Emily Dickinson and the contemporary poet Henri Cole; Louise Glück and Emily Dickinson; Shakespeare in his soliloquies and Milton’s Satan; Elizabeth Bishop and John Keats; and William Blake and Wallace Stevens.

Reading the poems aloud and lively discussion are how we’ll fill our hour (and a half).

Don Barkin has degrees from Harvard College and Cambridge University. He has taught seminars for a number of years at Yale and Wesleyan. He has published three books of poetry.

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