CW 502

Fall 2022 All Classes

All Classes

Problems in Poetry Writing

SHOW FINAL EXAM SCHEDULE

Credit: 4 hours.

Examination of the creative process of poetry from the perspective of aesthetics and techniques, illustrated from the work of selected authors.

Prerequisite: Graduate standing in English.

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CW 502 class schedule data for fall 2022
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	45292	Lecture-Discussion	E	3:00PM -5:30PM	R	125 English Building	Kempf, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/22/22-12/07/22 Section Info: FA22- CW 502 45292 - Chris Kempf Problems in Poetry: Systems, Economies, Architectures This course examines the craft of poetry as a problem in economics, attending to three structuring metaphors (systems, economies, architectures) which poets have used to conceptualize their writing as a form of labor. In doing so, we ask why the writing workshop itself, what Mark McGurl calls an “open system,” invests so heavily in the idea of poetry as craft. Returning to the Greek etymology of “economy”—the frugal management of the oikos, or house—we ask how U.S. poets situate their writing within various overlapping notions of the economic. For whom and to what ends does poetry exist as a form of labor? How do Program Era poets conceive the institutional and aesthetic systems in which they work? Why does architecture, in particular, play such a formative role in U.S. poetics? To address these questions, we explore a series of interrelated ideas: ekphrasis as economic exchange, ars poeticae, Marxist poetics of the 1930s, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the circulation of poetry in prestige and institutional economies. After opening with the ancient underpinnings of poetic economies (Aristotle, Horace, Plato), we move through Whitman and Dickinson to modernists including Brooks, Bishop, Hughes, Rukeyser, and Williams. Among mid-century and contemporary poets, we focus on Robert Duncan and Black Mountain College, Margaret Walker and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, David Baker, Quan Barry, Victoria Chang, Linda Gregerson, Gregory Pardlo, Carl Phillips, and Roger Reeves. Students will produce either a seminar paper or a portfolio of creative work, and are encouraged to pursue their own distinct research agendas. Restriction(s): Restricted to Creative Writing major(s) or minor(s). Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.