Seeking greater aesthetic, emotional, and political freedom, poets often innovate the relationship between the poem and the page. What is gained when the poetic text moves in other dimensions? What does it mean to perform our many selves in the act of writing? What can we understand about the word through the scene or the stage? This Reading for Writers seminar will look at texts that enable us to think about the modes in which our writing can sound. While our focus will be on close-reading, analyzing, and writing “poetry” as such, we will also look at creative examples of cinema, drama, and contemporary digital artwork to explore this expanded sense of the poetic text. During the semester, students will be required to attend a few poetry performances and complete a final performance project of some kind, in consultation with the instructor. Texts will include: Amiri Baraka, Alvin Lucier, Bertolt Brecht, Gertrude Stein, Charles Reznikoff, Kamau Brathwaithe, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ntozake Shange, Langston Hughes, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Fred Moten, Tytti Heikkinen, John Wieners, Wanda Coleman, and more.

The Poet's Essay is a hybridic form blending elements of lyricism, rupture, allusion, collage and documentation within the essay format. The various junctures of this mode manifest in what can be a wildly expansive, investigatory, and rebellious writing project. The poet's essay invites you to break rules, resist dichotomizing, and meticulously craft the music and sonic influence of poetry, within the structure of an essay, creating an immersive experience. The poet's essay might be the form one takes when approaching subjects of indeterminacy or ambivalence, where conclusions are not easily formulated. It might be a form where one does not want to forego "voice" alongside research and reportage. We will write critically about the Poet’s Essay in relation to our reading and develop several long and short Poet's Essays of our own. Readings include: Claudia Rankine, Eileen Myles, Maggie Nelson, Renee Gladman, Wayne Koestenbaum, Myung Mi Kim and Cecilia Vicuña. This course fulfills the Reading for Writers requirement.

RFW Poetry: Form(s) and Formlessness. This Reading for Writers seminar will explore collections of contemporary poetry that center form and formal innovation, process, methodology, visual rhetorics, and conceptual elements. All poems have form, but not all poems agitate known and named forms in order to create something truly uncategorizable, often using unexpected raw materials to construct the poem itself. How do contemporary poets use formal experimentation to disrupt (and dialogue with) historical narratives, cultural norms, and the politics of their day? How does form emote in poetry, and what can be learned from poets for whom form and feeling are inextricable? Through close-reading, craft discussion, critical response, creative writing exercises and play, students will immerse themselves in wild, restless, visual work that challenges how we read poetry and any preconceptions about the politeness of the genre. Together we’ll sharpen our skills as confident “form-forward” readers of poetry, as well as writers over the course of the semester. Students should be prepared to lead occasional discussions, share their original poetry and contribute to the classroom environment, write a midterm close-reading paper, and produce a final critical or creative self-designed project. Some poets we will consider include, but are not limited to, Amber Atiya, Bhanu Khapil, Don Mee Choi, Diane Di Prima, CA Conrad, Layli Long Soldier, Robin Coste Lewis, and many more.