English 90ap. Race, Identity, and American Poetry Right Now

Instructor: Chris Spaide
Tuesdays, 3:00-5:00 pm | Location: Barker 269
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Enrollment: Limited to 15 students.

What does contemporary American poetry look like if we consider work by poets of color to be absolutely central rather than specialized or marginal? What assumptions, questions, and tools do we bring to bear when we read African American poets, Latinx poets, Asian American poets, Pacific Islander poets, Native poets, and mixed-race poets? (For that matter: What do we bring to bear when we read a white or “unmarked” poet?) Questions like these will guide our careful reading of ten poetry books, all published in the last five years. We’ll also study the many media where poetry is now published, reviewed, and adapted, from literary magazines and anthologies to Twitter and web series. Our writing culminates in a research essay, equal in scope and ambition to a publishable review-essay or scholarly article; we’ll also read, reverse-engineer, write, and workshop the primary prose genre of contemporary-poetry criticism, the book review. Poets include Claudia Rankine, Danez Smith, Tommy Pico, Brenda Shaughnessy, Natalie Scenters-Zapico, Craig Santos Perez, Layli Long Soldier, Fatimah Asghar, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Cameron Awkward-Rich, and Terrance Hayes.