In this course we will closely read queer poems, queer poets, and queer poetry. We might also read some poems, poets, and poetry that are not queer—but we’ll experiment in reading “queerly”—whether such a methodology is possible, what such a methodology might offer, and what it might be limited by. Our investigations will follow thematic constellations as we ask questions about form, structure, and style. In the words of Elizabeth Bishop, we will respond to the invitation of the poem—to please come flying. Our flights will include topics like: poetic structure; public and private lives of poems; the poem as play; the poem as pleasure; queer time and queer nature; constructing a poetic self; poetic argument; and poetic history.
In our understanding of queerness we will think, necessarily, with the poetic voice—that I that speaks as the poem’s speaker. In this context the course is committed to thinking primarily about positionality and the embodied, material ways that poems, poets, and poetry figure the experience of the lived I. Thus, our engagement with the poems will be grounded in accounts of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other markers of selfhood. We will ask: how is queerness represented differently in poems in which other markers of identity suffuse, inform, and exceed the poetic voice? What do other genres—theory, autobiography, fiction, experimental music and film—open up in our considerations of positionality and poetic voice? Finally, we will think rigorously and capaciously about the historical contexts of poems. Poetry is not divorced from any political moment. In this tenuous moment, as in many others, poetry becomes a refuge for language, just as it can become a site of mystification, working out, and working through. How does the triangulation of language, politics, and queerness intersect? What are the politics of poetry? And is there such a thing as the poetry of politics?
In our understanding of queerness we will think, necessarily, with the poetic voice—that I that speaks as the poem’s speaker. In this context the course is committed to thinking primarily about positionality and the embodied, material ways that poems, poets, and poetry figure the experience of the lived I. Thus, our engagement with the poems will be grounded in accounts of race, class, gender, sexuality, and other markers of selfhood. We will ask: how is queerness represented differently in poems in which other markers of identity suffuse, inform, and exceed the poetic voice? What do other genres—theory, autobiography, fiction, experimental music and film—open up in our considerations of positionality and poetic voice? Finally, we will think rigorously and capaciously about the historical contexts of poems. Poetry is not divorced from any political moment. In this tenuous moment, as in many others, poetry becomes a refuge for language, just as it can become a site of mystification, working out, and working through. How does the triangulation of language, politics, and queerness intersect? What are the politics of poetry? And is there such a thing as the poetry of politics?
- Teacher: Reuven Goldberg