I liked the course, though I have to say I found certain chapters inaccessible as a non-native speaker. This particularly applies to "The Bridge." I felt kind of lost in the lecture and could not make much sense of the poem either. Maybe I will return to it later on and have another go.
I'm not sure I can agree Emily Dickinson's poem in the module on metapoetry is metapoetic, as defined by the lecturer. Although apart from that, that module was great and refreshing, because of an altered format, which brings me to the next point:
I think the lectures are kind of monotonous both visually and in terms of content delivery. The previous courses I took on Coursera (Python for Everybody specialization) were so alive I literally had the sense I was sitting next to the professor and he was talking to me. In Modern American Poetry, the lectures sounded as if they were being read word for word (which was probably the case) and seeing just the professor reading and the bookshelf behind them most of the time detracted from the experience. Perhaps it would be better if some "slide-like" elements were added, not just with verses, but perhaps with the dates of the events mentioned, diagrams, or something. I know there were some, but after watching all of the lectures, it really feels like hours of watching a single person reading in the frame + opening/closing sequence + photos + verses. Those dates, diagrams and other pop-up data, if they were there, didn't really register for me. Perhaps there were too few in proportion to how long the "talking head" remains in the frame.
Also, I realize this might be due to people in the U.S. taking copyright seriously, but for me, it was absolutely infuriating that some of the poems assigned or suggested for reading were so hard to find online I eventually abandoned all hope to do it. I was glad I had poetry collections of many of the poets mentioned prior to starting the course, but if I were a complete beginner, that would probably annoy me even more. I mean, one listens to the lecture, reads the text, makes an honest attempt to understand it, but on top of that, so much effort is needed to find the full texts of some of the poems mentioned in the lectures.
I think the guidelines for doing and grading the written assignments should put more emphasis on independent thinking and proposing ideas of one's own. The way they are formulated, some people tend to just repeat whatever is said in the lecture, referencing the videos and the poems here and there and making a point of sounding polite and clear, but that really does not add anything. I feel it is much more valuable to add one thought of your own than reiterate five points already made in the lecture, more or less. But the way I read the grading recommendations, that is not explicitly encouraged, so some people just avoid it and probably get high grades on peer review, because that is not really required.
