SloPo mini-courses, 2024
To enroll in any of these courses, please fill out THIS FORM.
List of sessions:
Session 1: January 22-31 – Kate Colby on Rosmarie Waldrop
Session 2: February 19-28 – JS Wu on Renee Gladman
Session 3: March 18-27 – Irene Torra Mohedena on Federico García Lorca
Session 4: April 15-24 – Mandana Chaffa on Louise Glück
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Session 1: January 22-31 — Kate Colby on Rosmarie Waldrop
That’s What There Is: Reading Rosmarie Waldrop
In this mini-course we will explore the renowned German-American poet Rosmarie Waldrop’s shifting approach to language over a prolific career spanning more than five decades. We will look at both prose poems and verse from her 2016 Selected Poems, Gap Gardening, as well as her most recent volume, The Nick of Time. Together, over 12 days, we will trace and discuss her simultaneously playful and very serious commitments to physics, metaphysics, and exigencies of translation. This SloPo group will meet January 22-31, with one optional Zoom (date and time TBD).
Session 2: February 19-28 — JS Wu on Renee Gladman
Visions of Renee Gladman
What does writing look like before it is made legible? In this mini-course, we enter into Renee Gladman’s Plans for Sentences (2022), an experimental collection of drawings and writings, which explore the hazy boundary that separates the two. We will discuss Gladman’s work and try our own hand at writing/drawing some plans for sentences. In addition to using discussion boards, there will be two optional hour-long Zoom sessions.
Session 3: March 18-27 — Irene Torra Mohedena on Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca: “I have the fire in my hands.”
In this mini-course we will encounter the poet Federico García Lorca (Spain, 1898-1936) and we will follow his poetic endeavors by discussing a brief selection of poems. Mysterious and obscure, Lorca’s poetry brings us to a world of symbols and metaphors where traditional and experimental forms coexist, never abandoning the people and social realities of its time. In addition to discussion in the ModPo forums, this SloPo group will have a Zoom session on Friday 22nd March 2023 at noon EST.
Session 4: April 15-24 – Mandana Chaffa on Louise Glück
The Poetry of Louise Glück
Let’s revisit the work of Louise Glück, the brilliant American poet and essayist—and U.S. Poet Laureate—who passed away in 2023. In her Nobel Prize speech she noted “The poems to which I have, all my life, been most ardently drawn are poems of the kind I have described, poems of intimate selection or collusion, poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.” It is in this generative spirit of collusion and collaboration that we’ll examine a sampling of her poetry. There will be at least one Zoom close reading session.
