CW 502

Fall 2025 Part of Term 1

Part of Term 1
Aug 25-Dec 10

Problems in Poetry Writing

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 2025
	CRN	Type	Section	Time	Day	Location	Instructor	Section Details
	45292	Lecture-Discussion	E	2:00PM -4:30PM	M	107A English Building	Kempf, C	Part of Term: 1 Date Range: 08/25/25-12/10/25 Section Info: FA25 CW 502 - Problems in Poetry Writing - Chris Kempf - This is a course in literary sociology, or what Pierre Bourdieu describes as “the field of cultural production.” As such, the course attends not only to literary texts but to those social, cultural, economic, and institutional forces which “produce” and “arrange” such texts within material and rhetorical contexts. Specifically, we focus on the interrelated fields, movements, and schools of contemporary poetry written in the past twenty years. Into what fields of discourse has such poetry organized itself? How and why have certain poets conceived of their work as part of a “movement”? What schools—both literal and figurative—have influenced the production of what Charles Bernstein calls “official verse culture”? Integral to our engagement with these questions is the notion that aesthetic strategies do not emerge in a vacuum; rather, they are shaped by and sounded out within multiple social and cultural contexts. By the end of the semester, students should be able to “map” contemporary poetry as a unified yet variegated field of cultural production. Restriction(s): Restricted to Creative Writing major(s) or minor(s). Restricted to Graduate - Urbana-Champaign.