English 165 - Spring, 2016

Topics in Poetry

Topic: The Poetry of Everyday Life

Class Information

Instructor: Ronda, Margaret
CRN: 63192
Time: TR 1:40-3:00
Location: 125 Olson

Description

In this course, we will engage a wide array of postwar and contemporary American poetry that takes quotidian life as its central subject of inquiry. We’ll think about the distinctive, often experimental, poetic forms and methods that develop as a means of investigating the “everyday” in this period, exploring their investments in realism, pragmatism, phenomenology, social documentary, and other literary forms of life-writing. We will consider how these works conceive of the “everyday” in relation to larger social life in an era characterized by changing cultural definitions of privacy, new forms of political activism, and the encroachments of global capitalism. We will pay particular attention to how these works conceive of the “everyday” in relation to questions of embodiment, affect, and reproductive labor. Throughout the course, we will place these primary texts in relation to critical theories of everyday life from Frankfurt School theorists and the Situationists through contemporary feminist, queer, and affect theory.

Texts

Midwinter Day, Bernadette Mayer
Lunch Poems, Frank O'Hara
Garments Against Women, Anne Boyer
Newcomer Can't Swim, Renee Gladman
Urban Tumbleweed, Harryette Mullen