This practice-oriented talk will take a close look at three poems and three short pieces of prose. I’ll explain why I think they are great and how they operate as memory machines and embodied practice. We’ll then pause and write a poem using some of what we’ve learned. We’ll look at a James Schuyler poem,* N. Nourbese Philip’s Zong!, and something by Fanny Howe. For prose, we’ll read Kafka, Sergio Chejfec, and Elena Garro.**
After we look at these guys, we will do the same as we did with the poets: we’ll use their meanings to write something of our own. This is not a workshop—it’s very much a playful lit crit group experience, and anything you write will be an opening of some sort, which I hope will continue to roll after this session. Plus, I really think reading is more important than writing—for writers and for everyone. So there’s only gain here for the species.
*Go buy his collected poems! Or check out the new bio of him by Nathan Kernan.
**I’d recommend reading Chejfec’s The Planets and Garro’s Week of Colors before the seminar. For additional reading, you might read Jazmina Barrera’s Queen of Swords, which is kind of a neo-bio of Elena Garro.
