English 4530/7530: Advanced Poetry

“Poetry is Not a Luxury”: US Poets Change the World

This course is for experienced and committed poets of all sorts and styles looking to expand their range as writers, readers, and editors in an intensive and supportive environment.

In this section of Advanced Poetry, we’ll examine the remarkable ways that US American poets have helped shape the world we live in today. Together, we’ll journey through four centuries of US American movements in poetry and consider the myriad ways that poets have impacted the conditions of everyday life in the US. From the abolitionist poetry of the nineteenth century, to the Civil Rights era poems of the twentieth, to contemporary developments in ecopoetry and nature writing, there is a long history of US American poets who hoped their work would have tangible impacts on the society around them. As we consider the relationship between these poets’ work, their association with literary movements like the Harlem Renaissance, the New York School, and the Black Arts Movement, and the historical context that shaped their writing, students will develop new perspectives on poetry’s role as an agent of change in the world. To that end, we’ll read major authors such as Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Claudia Rankine, Sonia Sanchez, Danez Smith, and Philip Metres.

In addition to reading and discussing these texts, we’ll work throughout the semester to develop our own writing while cultivating a supportive workshop community. We’ll spend time writing together, creating together, discussing each other’s individual poems, and learning how to provide whatever kind of feedback and support each individual needs. The goal is to build a collaborative classroom space that serves us all, wherever we are on our journey, and wherever we aim to go. As we collaborate in the workshop space, each of you will write poems with an eye towards creating chapbooks in which those individual poems add up to more than the sum of their parts.