Archive | Critical

Timothy Yu’s introduction discusses the complexities of defining our particular era of contemporary American poetry, acknowledging the difficulty of describing something that has not yet finished. He sees the study of contemporary poetry as an opportunity, where critics can “reevaluate, rewrite, and revise… frameworks that often highlighted certain developments in poetry (and history) at the […]

I have been reading Rupi Kaur’s poetry since the fad started in 2014. Whether it was because I was a freshman in college and everything was exciting, or because I never really liked poetry but found hers accessible, I continued to find myself buying her books and really connecting with them. So when I saw […]

Selfie-Help: The Multimodal Appeal of Instagram Poetry https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lili-Paquet/publication/332428398_Selfie-Help_The_Multimodal_Appeal_of_Instagram_Poetry/links/619e9978f1d62445716821db/Selfie-Help-The-Multimodal-Appeal-of-Instagram-Poetry.pdf   Lili Pâquet writes on the influence of social media poets and how they are reshaping literary form and reaching new audiences in her article “Selfie-Help: The Multimodal Appeal of Instagram Poetry” (296).  She begins by discussing the difference of pen on paper to the typing to […]

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 […]

“The Poetics of Self-writing: Women and the National Body in the Works of Lucille Clifton” by Dr. Tanfer Emin Tunç explains the deep intersectionality that exists between racial studies and feminism as exemplified through the work of Lucille Clifton’s autobiography and her poetry. Dr. Tunç is a professor at University in Ankara, Turkey in their […]

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 […]

Lucille Clifton 1936-2010     In Joyce Johnson’s journal article, “The Theme of Celebration in Lucille Clifton’s poetry,” Johnson highlights Clifton’s accomplishments, but focuses on how she maintained a celebratory tone in her works even while writing about some of the tough experiences of Black life. Clifton’s “vision is not marred by sentimentality, for she […]

In my perhaps idiotic attempt to grasp Language Poetry, I stumbled across an article that I (charmingly, foolishly) believed to be the key to my understanding. This delightful article titled “What is ‘Language Poetry’?” by Lee Bartlett tried and failed valiantly and perhaps ironically to explain this mystifying style of poetics. I looked through half […]

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 […]