What Else Can Poetry Do? • Dee Morris • Spring 2008

Dee Morris
Office: EPB 460
Office hours: Tues. 2:30-3:30 pm & Thurs. 2:30-3:45 pm
dee-morris@uiowa.edu

Course description and objectives:

Although the term “lyric” is often used as a synonym for poetry in general, it is only one of many possible strategies to construct a poem.  Brief, intense, and subjective, the lyric is usually linked to a set of Romantic critical phrases--”spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” “willing suspension of disbelief,” “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”—that set their plots and subject positions.  This course will explore the struggle of modern and contemporary poets to write despite or against or beyond the lyric.

Beginning with an examination of the paradigm shift that has problematized the lyric’s ideals of “authenticity” and “natural speech,” we will read experiments in the following alternative forms:

• documentary poetics
• counterpublic poetics
• cultural poetics & Language Writing
• new media and procedural poetics

The course will end with an extended section on contemporary thinkers who have turned to poetry to approach and analyze the events surrounding 9-11.

Requirements for the course will include annotations, presentations, a series of short essays, and a more sustained examination of one or more varieties of the twentieth-century antilyric.

Key to hot links on the left panel:

Syllabus: This page contains a description of course expectations and policies.

Schedule:This overview of the course includes a list of required texts, the semester's reading schedule, and due dates for all required assignments. It should be bookmarked and consulted before each class.

Assignments:This page contains descriptions of written and oral course assignments.

Works: These pages are repositories of concrete, visual, and audio materials that complement and extend our reading.

Discussion: This link takes you to the ICON login page from which you can post reading responses, ask questions, and debate ideas.

Resources: This page, soon to arrive, will contain a list of books on reserve, useful websites, and other helpful materials.