How Poets Play Dead
General
Course Long Title
How Poets Play Dead
Subject Code
CCRW
Course Number
352
Department(s)
Academic Level
UG - Undergraduate
Description
Necrosocial Poetry: How Poets Play Dead
Poets past and contemporary have often used the social space of the poem as one in which to 'play dead.' In this poetry writing course, we will do the same. Many of the poets we will read in this class, whose texts will help to instigate our own poems, have conceived of the poet or the speaker of a poem as, in a sense, already dead. This conception points to an understanding of literature itself as a "necrosocial" dimension of experience, a social space of experience that is often a very intense one for the writer and reader while remaining simultaneously an impossible one in the sense that socializing with the dead would be, from a rationalist perspective, empirically impossible. In considering poetry as a way to play dead together we will also be thinking about the nature of the imaginary social spaces we go to when we read and write poetry. Readings and writing prompts will help us explore this ambiguous terrain that can be seen, in the words of the poet Peter Gizzi, as "100% real and 100% imaginary." On the way, will also examine necrosocial poetic practices in the light of climate change and fears of civilizational collapse and even human extinction.
Poets past and contemporary have often used the social space of the poem as one in which to 'play dead.' In this poetry writing course, we will do the same. Many of the poets we will read in this class, whose texts will help to instigate our own poems, have conceived of the poet or the speaker of a poem as, in a sense, already dead. This conception points to an understanding of literature itself as a "necrosocial" dimension of experience, a social space of experience that is often a very intense one for the writer and reader while remaining simultaneously an impossible one in the sense that socializing with the dead would be, from a rationalist perspective, empirically impossible. In considering poetry as a way to play dead together we will also be thinking about the nature of the imaginary social spaces we go to when we read and write poetry. Readings and writing prompts will help us explore this ambiguous terrain that can be seen, in the words of the poet Peter Gizzi, as "100% real and 100% imaginary." On the way, will also examine necrosocial poetic practices in the light of climate change and fears of civilizational collapse and even human extinction.