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 […]
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 […]
i told my mother that i’m depressed i told her that i was tired She cried Where was the Support? She cried dad has an ulcer i cant cry i don’t cry who is allowed to be depressed why is it never me sometimes i hate her usually i hate myself there is screaming downstairs […]
If I Could Have A Baby With Symmetry or Another Solid Object Surely, this sweat isn’t the same sweat It couldn’t be. There’s no sizzle Pop or stop to missing your Hair kinking up with enthuse— my greatest pleasure. Your eyes In teaching moments. In real time my world swells and this is almost Too […]
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 […]
Flarf poetry is confusing. Poets.org provides a brief guide to flarf which somehow confuses me further. There were three options of a definition to observe: 1) Wrong. Un-PC. Corrosive, cute, cloying, awful. 2) Poetry with a heavy use of google searches, almost community written. Poems that are continuation, revision, or even a plagiarization, all out […]
When I read Lucille Clifton’s “I am accused of tending to the past” I am reminded of why we as a collective humanity read poetry. Clifton distills the elements of our human condition that transcend time—like history, reproduction, care, and the power of language and punctuates these elements with inventive brevity. To me, this poem […]
Beat Writers- Steven Willis Willis introduces this poem with “Beat Writers” as the title and dedicated for Baraka and Ginsberg. Considering that Baraka was “arguably, the most significant BAN artist/theorist and an essential figure in twentieth-century American literature,” paired with Ginsberg, who tends to be almost the father of American Contemporary Poetry, I feel as […]