BFA Poetry Craft Course: Poems that Refuse
CRW4999.01
Course Description
Summary
Is there something about poetry in particular that lends itself to refusal? By what means can poems refuse, or even situate themselves in active battle? What might a "no" protect, and what sorts of spaces for meaning-making can this open up? For the purposes of this course, we will complicate the concept of refusal through poetic enactments of opposition, unruliness, negation, reversal, dissent, attention to the overlooked, upending, withholding, opacity, excess, silence, and more. We will consider manifestations of refusal from the formal and rhetorical to the material. Students will engage with readings and creative experiments that build on the premise that the practice of refusal makes way for possible beginnings. Assigned readings may include Sara Ahmed, Amiri Baraka, Anne Boyer, Dionne Brand, Kamau Brathwaite, Catullus, Dom Hale, June Jordan, Bernadette Mayer, Anna Mendelssohn, Nicanor Parra, Muriel Rukeyser, Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, Wendy Trevino, and Miyo Vestrini.
Prerequisites
All interested students need to apply to the class by sending a short writing sample of several pages of fiction and a paragraph expressing their interest. Work should be submitted via this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1X1hqGY2kQQF-YNu8A0oBuvr8iqiOmE7cTlKma7…, by Friday, November 13. Students will be notified of acceptance into the class by Tuesday, November 17.
Corequisites
All students registered for 4000 level Literature and/or Creative Writing courses are required to attend Literature Evenings and the Poetry at Bennington series, which happen over the term on Wednesday evenings at 7pm.
Cross List
- Literature