Department of English

There have been a number of poetry hoaxes over the last hundred or so years--the Spectra Hoax, the project of a couple of American wannabe Imagists; "Ern Malley," an imaginary modernist created by two anti-modernist poets; "Araki Yasusada," an imaginary survivor of the bombing of Hiroshima; among others. We will examine these, along with a range of related cases where poets wrote under elaborated false identities. These hoaxes and masquerades always seem to arise around the most contested poetic and cultural sites, which is one reason why they're so interesting.

Course work will consist of weekly responses to the readings, and three short papers.