Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”) Blog
ModPo update for Friday of week 9
If it’s your intention to post a response to assignment #4 (create a mesostic or do one of Bernadette’s writing experiments), I would strongly urge you to create it and post it HERE before Sunday if possible. We will all begin...
Al’s thoughts on the challenge of aleatory poetry
Oh, oh, the range of responses to the week 9 poems! I love it. On one hand, we have the “Hmmm, I don’t quite get it” thread. On the other hand, we have the “OMG I’m...
Week 9 podcast recording
If you didn’t catch our webcast live earlier tonight, please watch the recording HERE. The video hasn’t been edited yet, so for now you will want to skip forward to 13:20 in order to see...
Some mesostic poems made by ModPo’ers
Some compelling mesostic poems have been made by ModPo people already. Check them out HERE. HERE is one by Marc Bauch that “writes through” one of Ahab’s famous scenes in Moby-Dick. HERE is one by Sophia Naz...
ModPo bonus videos
Need a break today? Why not spend some time watching some short “bonus” ModPo videos! Here’s a selection: watch this video on poems we believe can be taught to 11- to 14-year-olds: LINK TO VIDEO watch...
ModPo update: week 9 begins
Welcome again to week 9. In the main ModPo syllabus this week, we read and discuss the aleatory writing of John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, Jena Osman, and Joan Retallack—and the writing experiments of...
ModPo week 9 starts now
Please ponder these questions: Can you imagine a poem whose meaning is not intended? What if a poet, experimenting with the idea of the speaking self, decided to create a compositional process that in...
ModPo update for Thursday of week 8, 2018
Got ten minutes tonight? Terrific! Please click HERE and review some essays! Below, in particular, are six essays on Eileen Myles’s “The Honey Bear” that could use a few more reviews/responses. Please click on at least...
A sampling of our Language poets’ poems (week 8)
Here are some fascinating options for starting into our week 8 syllabus: Lyn Hejinian writes a prose-poem autobiography, following her life year by year—but her sentences are not in chronological order, nor are they of...
