Columbia College Chicago
Graduate Poetics, 52-6510-01
Thursdays 3:30-6:20 pm; 33 E Congress Pkwy Room 313
Jill Magi, Instructor;
Office Hours & Location: by appointment, 33 E Congress 520
Graduate Poetics
“I don’t believe that poetics should be prescriptive, even though an artist may adopt or develop certain theories to guide her work at various times. I consider such theories to be ‘scaffoldings’ that help the artist make the works, but that may well be discarded and/or modified afterward. Ultimately, they may have little or no truth value (except as analyses) and only indirectly embody or express ethical or political values.”
-Jackson Mac Low quoted by Anne Tardos in her introduction to Mac Low’s 154 Forties
Description & Goals:
What is meant by “poetics”?
Who writes poetics?
What is the relationship between “poetics” and “literary theory” and “philosophy”?
What are the poetics we inherit as word workers in this contemporary context?
What happens to “poetics” when we look outside the disciplinary site lines of poetry and English?
Poet, what are your poetics?
According to the Columbia College MFA poetry program, “The Graduate Poetics Seminar provides an overview of foundational and touchstone theories of poetic making while deepening students’ knowledge of poetry and expanding their framework for their own theories of the making of poetry.”
Required Texts
Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry, 1800-1950 edited by Melissa Kwasny
American Poets in the 21st Century: the New Poetics edited by Lisa Sewell and Claudia Rankine
Pdfs will be posted for you to download and print on our site in Oasis.
Assignments
1. Weekly readings: bring in typed up and dated pages of notes/questions/thoughts/quotes from and in response to each poetics/author. Consider this writing your “reading journal.” I may occasionally collect these to look in on your reading and thinking.
2. Two in-class presentations/discussion facilitation: a close reading of the text/theory at hand, background info on representative authors and historical context, connections with their creative writing (so bring in a representative poem or page), questions for your own practice as framed by you, practicing poet.
3. Final poetics statement/essay citing examples of your own creative projects.
Attendance:
The official English Department absence policy states: “More than two absences in classes
that meet once a week (and more than four classes in classes that meet twice a week) will affect your grade and can result in failure.” Patterns of lateness can affect your grade.
Technology:
Please do not use laptops or cell phones or other electronic devices during class. Please print out pdfs and bring books to class to work from.
Grading:
Participation, readings and notes, attendance: 50%
Presentations: 30%
Final essay/poetics: 20%
Course Schedule (subject to change):
Date / Readings Due / Assignments DueJan 31 / Introductions
Truth and Beauty and Beyond:
Plato, Kant, Others
Feb 7 / 19th Century American Precedents:
from Kwasny: Whitman, Dickinson
Other Voices:
from Kwasny: Mallarme ,Stein / Letter to me: about your poetics at this moment, or what you think about this word “poetics.” How and what do you write and why? What do you hope to learn or refine in this class?
Feb 14 / Surrealism and Negritude:
from Kwasny: Breton, Cesaire / Notes
Feb 21 / Modernisms:
from Kwasny: Pound, Eliot, Loy
Plus Lorenzo Thomas, Intro to Extraordinary Measures plus excerpt of chapter on Melvin Tolson (pdf) / Notes
Feb 28 / Experimentation in the 50s:
from Kwasny: Olson, Zukofsky / Notes
March 7 / Race and Modernism/Modernity:
from Kwasny: Hughes
Plus “Documents from the Black Arts Movement” / Notes
March 14 / Black Feminisms/Troubling Identitarian Discourses:
Harryette Mullen
Plus pdf
Erica Hunt (pdf) / Notes
March 21 / Feminisms:
Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde (pdfs)
Texts, Pleasures, Authors:
Helene Cixous, Roland Barthes (pdfs) / Notes
March 28 / Spring break: Class will not meet
April 4 / Language Poets, Experimental Directions:
Charles Bernstein, Leslie Scalapino, Lyn Hejinian
(pdfs)
Queer Theory:
Eve Sedgwick (pdf) / Due: mid-term letter to the class on your thoughts so far.
April 11 / Between Lyric and Language/Identity and Innovation:
From Sewell and Rankine: Lisa Sewell’s introduction
Plus Stacy Doris, D. A. Powell, Kevin Young, Tracie Morris / Notes
April 18 / Class will not meet:
Visual art and poetics: Fluxus, Conceptual Art, Text-image hybridity: visit Art Institute of Chicago
Read “New Life Writing” by Patrick Durgin
April 25 / Guest speaker, Patrick Durgin / Notes
May 2 / From Sewell and Rankine: Spahr, Clover, Kim / Notes
May 9 / From Sewell and Rankine: Nowak, Goldsmith
Ecopoetics: readings TBA
Generative philosophy:
Begin reading Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze (pdfs) / Notes
May 16 / Donna Haraway, Gilles Deleuze continued . . . / Final essay
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