COML 3800 - Poetry and Poetics of the Americas

(crosslisted)
(also AMST 3820, ENGL 3801, LATA 3800, SPAN 3800) (LA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits.

J. Monroe.

As globalization draws the Americas ever closer together, reshaping our sense of a common (uncommon) American culture, what claims might be made for a distinctive, diverse “poetry of the Americas”? How might we characterize its dominant forms and alternative practices? What shared influences, affiliations, concerns and approaches might we find and what differences emerge? Ranging across North and South America, Central America and the Caribbean, this course will place in conversation such figures as Whitman, Martí, Dickinson, Darío, Poe, Borges, Stein, Mistral, Williams, Neruda, Pound, Césaire, Rich, Walcott, Glissant, Brathwaite, Ashbery, Zuríta, Fanny Howe, Parra, Susan Howe, Harjo, Cisneros, Bracho, and Vicuna. All texts not written in English will be available in translation as well as in the original.