This course offers students an in-depth encounter with the two most original and unconventional poets in the literature of the United States, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Considered classics today, they were far from the mainstream in their lifetimes. We will seek to recover what was and remains surprising and groundbreaking about these two authors, from their sexual and gender-nonconformity to their departures from conventional poetic form, diction and subject matter. The course should particularly appeal to students interested in poetry and/or gender and sexuality.