Course Description
Summary
In her 1983 essay, “A Poet’s Prose,” Susan Sontag set out to demarcate what exactly marks exemplary prose written by poets. Similarly, in this course, we will aim to demarcate “A Poet’s Proof;” that is, we will attempt to name and showcase the very many intangible evidences that a poet brings forth in making manifest in language those otherwise hazy, hidden, and invisible moments. What are the evidences that a poem holds in its coffers, and what is the proof that a poem offers? In this course, we will consider how the Existential, Ephemeral, Ethereal, and Empirical are represented in contemporary poetry, focusing on works that utilize shifting and searching forms or rely on spatial elements or visual images. In addition to crafting and workshopping poems, we will consider Marwa Helal’s Invasive Species, Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left Handed Poems, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric, Kristin Prevallet’s I, Afterlife: Essay in Mourning Time, and Raquel Salas Rivera’s lo terciario/the tertiary.
Terms