Like every other course that I have taken in both undergraduate and graduate school that has examined multiple authors from various backgrounds, this course offers very little in the way of indigenous voices for examination or analysis. With the exception of a few mentions in excerpts from selected authors, Native American voices are notably absent […]
In ““The truth is memory has not forgotten us”: Memory, Identity, and Storytelling in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” Quan Manh Ha and Mia Tompkins examine how memory and storytelling interact to shape identity through the vehicle of “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong. While this article deals mainly with the book […]
In “Black Names in White Space: Lucille Clifton’s South“, Hilary Holladay attempts to shed light on some of Lucille Clifton’s work, including “at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989”. While Holladay’s work stands on its own, I am including a link to an interview I read on the Modern American Poetry Site between […]
It should not come as a surprise to many in the Post 45 class that I was initially not a fan of the “language poets”. I prefer my poetry to look and sound and act like poetry. I struggle to make sense of poems that look like random words squished into or spread out over […]
TW: Depiction of infant mortality In “On Your Twenty-first Birthday“, Joan Austin Geier formulates a formalist poem that is heartbreaking in its content. While examining this piece, I enjoyed the formalism even through a topic that is so tragic. As I have often stated though, as freethinking and progressive as I may be in many […]
I spent a lot of time reading and rereading the Black Arts Movement poetry. I read them grouped by poet, grouped by gender, grouped loosely by age. I was trying to find ways that they were connected, things that were similar in many of the poems. To me, the thread that seemed to run through […]
TW: Abuse. Suicide ideation/attempt. I keep saying that I’m not a poet, and that I struggle with understanding poetry, then we get to Sylvia Plath and I remember the things that I’ve always enjoyed about poetry. It’s not that “Daddy” is any easier to understand than many of the other poems we’ve read. Still, somehow […]
And the message also seems to be that this can be whatever it needs to be and maybe that is part conversation part explanation part extrapolation As long as the conversation keeps moving forward maybe only goes in the opposite direction once or twice if that’s really the direction it needs to go […]
Burt Kimmelman was not on our reading list for this week, but I feel like he should have been. In addition to the books and articles on literary criticism that he has under his belt, he has also penned 11 books of poetry, with one, Steeple at Sunrise, published as recently as 2022. After reading […]
I am going to count it as the divine workings of fate that Anne Waldman’s “Fast Speaking Woman” was the last poem on the list to be read this week. It had to be fate, not just the alphabet, because none of the other listings were alphabetized. Waldman just happened to be last. If her […]