Lecture:
12:20P-1:10P MW (70) 3 cr

Discussion:
12:20P-1:10P F (35)
1:25P-2:15P F (35)

TOPIC: THE CAULDRON: POETRY IN THE 80S AND 90S.

What do we hear bubbling above the collisions and blendings of
voices in poetry as the century comes to an end?  This is a
course in current movements and directions in contemporary
poetry.   In this course we will look at the multiplicity of
voices that have emerged in the last two decades.  We will also
examine the intersections of print with performance art and
electronic text.  The course will begin with an examination of
the traditional narrative, lyric, and dramatic poem.  Then we
will look at how these works have been re-envisioned in
collaborations, new formalism, performance poems, slams, sound
poems, language poems, poems of place, ecological poems,
religious poems, hypertext, rap, dub, and poems of witness.   We
will consider the different consciousnesses embodied in these
poems.

We will read poems by Wislawa Szymborska, Seamus Heaney, Minnie
Bruce Pratt, Kamau Brathwaite, Sekou Sundiata, C.K. Williams,
Stephanie Strickland, Czeslaw Milosz, Amiri Baraka, Campbell
McGrath, C.D. Wright,   Marilyn Hacker, Jayne Cortez and many
others.=20
Grades will be based on participation, a response journal,
several short papers, and a group research project.