Poetry Games: Experimental Poetics and Avant-Garde Aesthetics

Not all poetry is, as William Wordsworth put it, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Some poetry challenges the very nature of language, art, and subjectivity through various self-decentering forms of writing. In this course, we will study a century’s worth of avant-garde experimental poetry, from the Dadaists and Surrealists to the Oulipo group, the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, and the conceptual and post-conceptual poetry movements of the 21st century, then create our own poetry using the same techniques and principles. The course is thus part survey and part writing workshop, with an emphasis on artistic process, linguistic theory, and the liberating power of constraints. Topics include: aleatory poetry, algorithmic poetry, blackout poetry, concrete poetry, erasure poetry, exquisite corpse, found poetry, homophonic translation, sound poetry, lipograms, S+7, etc.