Poet/Critics: a Seminar

To cite the program webpage, "The Creative Writing
MFA was designed to get over the division between
'creative' and 'critical.'" In the spirit of this
commitment, this reading-focused seminar will be
devoted to distinguished poet/critics who write
across multiple genres. Reading their creative and
critical work side-by-side will both broaden and
sharpen our writerly repertoires as we consider a
number of discursive traditions and conventions.
With an eye towards the craft of criticism, we
will also discuss a range of professional and
rhetorical concerns (publication venue, target
audience, overwork and exhaustion in the age of
the downsized neoliberal university). While there
are, to be sure, multiple lineages of poet/critics
within literary history (from Virgil to Laura
Riding, from Alexander Pope to T.S. Eliot), we
will concentrate on contemporary practitioners for
the sake of focus. We will read a substantial
amount of literary criticism, but we will consider
figures who engage with varied artistic media-for
example, we will study Amiri Baraka's music
criticism, and/or John Yau's art criticism. Other
poet/critics may include Nathaniel Mackey, Rachel
Blau Duplessis, Srikanth Reddy, Evie Shockley, and
Fred Moten. Final projects may include critical
seminar papers, a series of reviews geared toward
periodical publication, or hybrid works that
combine both creative and critical ambitions.