Dear members (or almost-fully-enrolled prospective members) of English 88, "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry": Hello, and welcome. Our course doesn't really begin until September 13, but I couldn't resist taking the opportunity to say hello. I've set up our electronic mailing list, or "listserv." The address is 88v@english.upenn.edu Anyone who sends a message to that address will be simultaneously reaching all the participants in the class including me as the instructor, Shawn Walker as the TA or teaching assistant, and Kirsten Thorpe who is our special undergraduate course assistant. When you send message to 88v@english - and you'll be doing that fairly often, once we get going - you will receive a copy of the message yourself (and thus will know it has been received by everyone). The course web site is here: www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v My own home page is here: www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis The course web site is about 96% finished, and you can certainly have a look around. One place to begin is http://dept.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/begin.html which is a web page I call "how to start." There is just one book to buy - the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry - and, I believe, the folks at Penn will be mailing you your copy. If you do get your own, for some reason, be sure to get the 2nd edition. I'm really looking forward to the course. It has many different aspects and formats, and has generally been fun for me and my students. Oh, and by the way, everyone calls me "Al." --Al Al Filreis The Class of 1942 Professor of English Faculty Director, the Kelly Writers House Carnegie/CASE Pennsylvania Professor of the Year, 1999