Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”) Blog
ENROLL HERE! ** ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior...
HERE is a link to all the ModPo resources on the art and writing of Marcel Duchamp. And here, below, is an image (from the Philadelphia Museum of Art) of the painting, Nude Descending...
Here is the schedule of weekly live webcasts for ModPo 2026 (the symposium mode, from early September though mid-November): Week 1 – Wed 9/2 – noonWeek 2 – Wed 9/9 – 10 AMWeek 3...
Anthony Watkins passed away on December 10, 2025. Put simply, Anthony was the most active and most engaged member of the ModPo community across the whole history of our gathering. He loved poetry (and...
Having heard just now from Suzanne of the passing this morning of our beloved ModPo colleague Anthony Watkins, and with Suzanne’s permission, I am sharing this very sad news. Put simply, Anthony was the...
We are mourning the loss of Ray Maxwell, a ModPo founder. Ray suddenly left (not by choice) the State Department in the summer of 2012. He had always had a passion for poetry and...
SloPo season is upon us. There are many ways to be involved with ModPo when we are not in our annual 10-week “Symposium Mode.” You can click HERE and learn of many ways to...
“The SoCal Spellers” have been posting to the ModPo forums, contributing their comments to our discussions of individual poems. We here on the ModPo team invite all ModPo people to respond to their posts!...
In the week ahead we hope you will join us as we read and discuss poems composed by chance, by quasi-nonintentional means, by aid of computer program, by gamification and randomization, by deterministic processes!...
Al Filreis gave the introductory chapter of his forthcoming book to a machine that makes podcasts from text. The result is not perfectly accurate but does give you a fair, informal sense of what...
After Al Filreis led a collaborative close reading of a Gertrude Stein poem with a class of middle-school students in Saigon, they sent us this reel. Fun! What a wonderful group.