Courses

This course explores postwar poets’ extensive experimentation with new media and hybrid genres. The visual arts and the sonic arts—as well as computer-generated writing—offered inspiration to poets who understood themselves to be working in a context broader than conventional lyric poetry. Poets to be discussed include John Cage, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, Larry Eigner, Jayne Cortez, Norman Pritchard, Bernadette Mayer, Susan Howe, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Tan Lin, Claudia Rankine, and Lilian-Yvonne Bertram. We will also discuss theoretical accounts of the “expanded field” of intermedia arts and cross-genre writing. No prior knowledge of postwar poetry or art is presumed.