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New and All: Post-1945 US Poetry Anthologies

ENGL 088.001
instructor(s):
TR 12-1:30

The books we’ll examine are declarations: this formation of poets and ideas EXISTS and it is NEW. To anthologize is not simply to gather in print but also to make real and historical. Of the editors and poets we will ask, what criteria of newness does each anthology offer (or, what's the poetic activity addressed to)? Who and what determined who was in, who was out? As opposed to what each anthology proposes as new and necessary poetic information, what stale poetry is to be cleared away?   

We will use a course reader (you can but will not need to purchase all of these big books) likely to include selections from the following: The New American Poetry, Black Fire, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side, The LANGUAGE Book (Poetics of the New), The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry, American Women Poets of the 21st Century, and Nepantla: Queer Poets of Color.

 

Weekly response papers (on poems and poets of the week) and a final paper of approximately 10 pages.

fulfills requirements
Sector 1: Theory and Poetics of the Standard Major
Sector 2: Difference and Diaspora of the Standard Major
Sector 6: 20th Century Literature of the Standard Major