HUMS640 Instructor: Jonathan Andrew Perez Poetic Justice: The Role of Poetry and Poets in Shaping Legal Rights [email protected]

SYLLABUS

Overview

This social poetics course considers three major areas of poetry and social practice: The Poetics of Witness, what does it mean to witness, either through war, the (over) policing of the state, or Diaspora belonging of Latinx writers in America. The Second Major area the Poetics of Revisioning in form and rights history. How do poetics come back to major moments in time and grapple with national division from Black Lives Matter to the troubled history of Jim Crow in America and consider the violence to the body as a community. The final area, “bringing it all back home” will be an assignment on the poetics of community and the collective. We will end on building out a podcast that addresses select poems and speaks to the community of listeners about its contemporary value in the hopes of beginning your amateur enthusiast careers as voices of the poetic forefront.

In this course, we will read contemporary and early American social poetics writing of 2020 Pulitzer Prize Winning book Jericho Brown’s The Tradition, Terrance Hayes' Hip Logic, Kaveh Akbhar, Ilya Kaminsky, Danez Smith, Reginald Dwayne Betts poet-author of "Felon" against earlier Afro- American and Latinx writers in the Harlem Renaissance and California Chicano/a movement, such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Juan Herrera Felipe, The first Chicano U.S. Poet Laureate, and the New York Lower East Side writers loosely associated with the Puerto Rican poetry collective.

We will dive into old order of the Harlem and Latinx Renaissance as well as the oldest group, reading Horace’s essay Ars Poetica and see how the “new contemporary" writers use the ideas of procedural justice and formally grapple with rhetorical sampling to comment both on social policy, and collectivity.

Rhetorically, you will learn through the art of "sampling" including how social poetics and witness give new life to Sonnets, Erasure-poems, Acrostics, the Cut-Up poem, and Ekphrasis to speak from a point of view that is underrepresented and for vulnerable communities across the country.

This course is not open to auditors.

Grades: Class Participation: 10% Essay 1: 30% Essay 2: 40% Final Podcast Group Project: 20%

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N.B. you are welcome to buy any, and all the books mentioned, a selected bibliography at the end. But I will always provide links to these poems and scanned copies of the secondary materials such as articles, and symposium clippings.

Attendance Policy:

You are strongly encouraged to attend every class online. Because we have such a limited time together, while there are no specific penalties for missing a class, I will require makeup assignments for class. The information in each class will be available by links including the poems, critical race theory, and social poetics essays, as well as multimedia podcasts and a short documentary film on “witnessing” in poetry and witnesses in legal theory. The real “meat and potatoes” will take place in our collaboration in class discussing the three major topic areas – the Poetic of Witness; The Poetics of Revisioning in Form and Rights History; and The Poetics of Community and Collective Action. The information and perspectives presented in each class will be very important. If you miss a class, you will be encouraged to find at least one “buddy” (who could be your partner on the Podcast) who can share notes with you and/or record the class if you should miss one. Assignments handed in late will be lowered by one letter grade per class session.

Assignments:

• Weekly “Discussion”: Before each class session you will be asked to write and submit (on the Discussion Boards on Moodle), and eventually podcasting on that weeks discrete topic of the poetics of witness, law and social poetics. The assignments are informal in application (unlike the essays which value analytical structure, writing, and thesis), rather we will value “depth” of thought, analysis, and surprising connections. There will be five informal discussions led jointly by students covering five the five weeks of class. Each will be led by the poems read in advance, and the topic we build upon. We will value drawing wide-social connections about the central place of poetics in shaping social consciousness, in times such as this pandemic, as well as the critical structural inequities that are changing communities.

• Comparative Essays: there will be two comparative essays, with the second essay valued a bit higher. I will be hosting “office hours” online before the assignment to strategize, enhance, and facilitate your analytical framing.

• Essay 1 topic: choose a topic covered by one of our poets “of the world” and that and that touches on the interplay of “art’s social presence” for a poetics and social practice essay. You can consider any of the topics we have discussed such (a) the poetics of witness, and social practice, (b) the poetics of revisioning, and what that means for revisionary poems that look back and build off history

• Essay 2 topic: Choose a collective and speak to the class about your idea of the collective, how you define collectivity and where in the poetic oeuvre it speaks to class, power, race, gender, or community. Choose at least two poems and start to address a theory of the collective. Present on the social circumstances, the collective power and charging of

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language, and how the poet converses with the collective. Consider defining the legal, social, and poetic collective, and the power of collectivity as an act, both in community organizing, changing the law and in the arts community transforming acting out of a solitary act of creation. Choose at least two or more from the poems read in class, or a collective discussed below and write about how the collaboration, conversation, and creativity forms a political practice and community.

• Final Podcast Project: the final Week 5 (Class 10) project is a group project. In groups of two please choose two or more poems, and do a reading of the poem in a Podcast format followed by your analysis. Record your voices reading the poems and in pairs make an argument for its importance today. This interactive opportunity will expand our language to consider how the public remains central in poetic practice, how critical race theory and legal theory coincides with the central issue of “voice” in poetic practice. As a model, you will be encouraged look at the following podcasts: The Tracy K Smith Podcast, “The Slow Down”, VS: the Danez Smith and Franny Choi poetry foundation podcast, Justice in America, Poet Kind, and other selections.

Week-By-Week Overview with Assignments

Note that all the assignments are due on the class dates under which they are listed, except for the first class. The weekly assignments may change to a podcast format.

FIRST THEME Poetics of Witness

Poetics and Social Practice is a literary, critical and pedagogical undertaking devoted to the situation of poetry and prose in the contemporary world. The area recognizes that “art’s social presence” as coined by the poet Adrienne Rich, is vital to contemporary culture, traversing the fields of legal, social, aesthetic, political and activist thought: it reconfigures these fields according to the designs of the imagination.

Week 1

Class 1 Introductions and Ice-breaker Exercise

Overarching discussion topic: witness: what is a witness? What power does a witness to history hold, how is a witness central in a legal case, and types of witnessing occur in evidence. What evidentiary weight does a witness hold in legal analysis as hearsay evidence, the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor. What if we consider that the law itself is subject to change, like poetry and language.

To read before class: Article by Carolyn Forche on the Poetry of Witness:

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https://www.folger.edu/events/poetry-of-witness

Handout in Class:

The Poetry of Diaspora and witness as place-in-America Diaspora, and America, Kaveh Akbar’s “The Palace” https://www.newyorker.com/books/poems/kaveh-akbar-the-palace

**For Next Class Watch the Documentary: The Poetry of Witness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL9YgCbcryw

Ilya Kaminsky’s Gunshot, from the Deaf Republic: the poetics of deafness, and nationhood https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/deaf-republic (Poetry of Witness during Wartime)

The Poetry of Witness as First Poet Laureate of Chicano Heritage: Juan Felipe Herrera https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70252/juan-felipe-herrera-101 Read: “Exiles” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58270/exiles-56d23c7eba08b Extra credit: Latinx U.S. Poetry https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144542/us-latinx-voices-in-poetry

Class 2

Witness Continued- discussing the form and value of witnessing

Handout to read in class

Lucille Clifton’s Come Celebrate with Me RR Lyrae: Matter by Van Clief Stefanon https://poets.org/poem/rr-lyrae-matter

Howl, by Allen Ginsberg: “I saw the best of my generation…” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl

**For Next Class The Golden Shovel Poem by Terrance Hayes The Golden Shovel on Poets.org Jericho Brown’s Duplex as an Invented Poetic Form Read: “Duplex” from the Tradition https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/152729/duplex Gwendolyn Brooks’ epic revision We Real Cool/ Selections of “The Anniad” What is the epic poem? What is a mock epic? Why would you mock an epic? What does the revisioning of the Epic do to the Poetry of Witness https://poets.org/glossary/epic

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Week 2

SECOND THEME The Poetics of Revisioning- Form and History

The Poetics of Revisioning includes such invented forms as Pulitzer-prize wining poet Jericho Brown’s Duplex, and Terrance Hayes “Hip Logic” Golden Shovel. However, beyond the revisioning of form, this motif considers how to communicate with one’s lineage. How does a poetic form start a conversation with imagined communities, and how can formal revision be seen as a site of resistance? Included in this section is the famous poetry of protest, and reactions to policing communities. Many poets have engaged with our current contemporary criminal justice system, and reimagine history as a source of inspiration and power to communities of color.

Class 3

Discussion of the formal revisions of the Anniad, “We Real Cool” Jericho Brown’s Duplex and The Golden Shovel.

Hand-out for Discussion: Allen Ginsberg’s imagined community and the beat generation. Consider how each line from these separate poets work to play with genre but have a political center. Article: Black Lives Matter: Opening a Second Front, Authors: J. Douglass Allen-Taylor

**For Next Class Read the Poetry Foundations: “Poetry of Protest, Resistance and Empowerment” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/101581/poems-of-protest-resistance-and- empowerment Hand out from Terrance Hayes’ Hip Logic (A series of Sonnets) “The Thing-No-One-Knows Blues” after Wanda Coleman “Ars Poetica #789” Extra Credit: Horace’s Ars Poetica https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69381/ars-poetica

The Protest and Policing the African American community Danez Smith: “dear white America” “dinosaurs in the hood” and “it wont be a bullet” from Don’t Call Us Dead Jericho Brown’s “Second Language” and “Bullet Points” and “The Tradition” on Eric Garner and police-shootings

Class 4

Preparation discussion for Essay 1 Discussion of the Poetry of Protest, Resistance and Empowerment.

Essay Due Class 5. **For Next Class: No reading, but to focus on Essay 1.

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Week 3

Class 5 Continued Race, Environment, Protest and Reimagining)

On Eric Garner: The Marc Steiner Show, December 4, 2014, http://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/racism/eric-garner/ “Plessy v. Ferguson,” History, http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson. Students are watching in Ferguson, Missouri Essay https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/students-are-watching-ferguson “Jim Crow Stories,” PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_plessy.h

Start the podcasting groups: assignment includes listening to Tracy K Smith’s Podcast, and Danez Smith and Franny Choi’s VS (modeled after the culture of slam poetry, discussing politics, poetry, and contemporary issues in social poetics)

**For Next Class:

Erasure Poets/ Cut-Up Poetics/ Revisionary Poets and Politics “Declaration” by Tracy K Smith Read: The Declaration of Independence from the National Archive Consider what Cut up poets and erasure poets accomplish in their language. What does this do to Witnessing history?

Audre Lorde (1934-1992), Hanging in Fire, from the collected poems of Audre Lorde https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42580/hanging-fire

The Poems of Persona as Revisionary of Identity of Race, Gender and Performance Knowing your ABCs/ back to basics (“Aracelis Girmay “r”) Bring to virtual class an article on Visual Poetics, or Cut-Up poetry to discuss

The Harlem Renaissance https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/harlem-renaissance Langston Hughes’ segregated past and the Black Poet as Canon-Maker by Elizabeth Alexander https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68438/the-black-poet-as-canon-maker

Class 6

Continued final discussion of cut-up poetry and the power of revision Introduction lecture to The Harlem Renaissance and the power of the Collective.

**For Next Class Langston Hughes Poetic Theory: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69395/the-negro-artist-and-the-racial-mountain Black Dada Nihilismus and Kevin Young, Poetry Editor of the New Yorker’s Response Read: “Beyond Words” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49763/beyond-words

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Jazz and the Black Poetic Avant-Gaurde “How you Sound” Article on Amiri Baraka’s Black Dada Nihilismus and Orality https://soundstudiesblog.com/tag/black-dada-nihilismus/ Amiri Baraka reading Black Dada Nihilismus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L9NYTpdXg8 “Auction Street” by Lucille Clifton “Incident” by Countee Cullen “John, Who Is Poor” by Gwendolyn Brooks “Your World” by Georgia Douglas Johnson

THIRD THEME : The Power of Community and Collectivity

Choosing a theme of collective empowerment, we delve into how poetry is a transformative act, and one that is not simply a solitary act of creation. We mine the depths of various poetic collectives in the Harlem Renaissance, Chicano/Latinx Poetry Communities, The Black Mountain School, The San Francisco Renaissance, and the Puerto Rican Poets Café, to name a few.

Week 4

Class 7 Preparation for Essay 2 Due 1 week from today. Discussion of the politics of action and creative expression. Harlem Renaissance poets and the poetry of voiceless communities from history. Discussion of Soundscape and post-modern black poetry such as Amiri Baraka.

**For Next Class “Women” by Alice Walker “Listen children” by Lucille Clifton “Fifth Grade Autobiography” by Rita Dove “Little Brown Baby” by Paul Laurence Dunbar “We Alone” by Alice Walker “Rhapsody” by William Stanley Braithwaite “Aunt Sue’s Stories” by Langston Hughes “Primer” by Rita Dove

Class 8 Continued work on collective expression and the power of form in establishing community. Further discussion of Essay 2, final essay.

How does Race, Gender, and Class influence these poets position as voicing community history?

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** For Next Class No assignment due for Second Essay Due. Will host virtual conferences with students

Week 5

Class 9 Second Essay due Podcast Assignments due for Class 10.

**For Next Class “this morning (for the girls of eastern high school)” by Lucille Clifton “Night” by Ethelbert Miller “My People” by Langston Hughes “Human Family” by Maya Angelou “How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This” by Hanif Abdurraqib Group Project Presentation PODCAST PROJECT: Make a podcast by choosing and reading at least two poems, and record your voices in pairs reading the poem and make an argument for its importance today. Podcasts to Listen to Justice in America The Tracy K Smith Podcast “ The Slowdown” Literally Literary Podcast Poet Kind

Class 10 Group Exercise, Final Class

Review Podcast and discuss how the class has changed your thinking about a topic, how poetry and language has evolved, and how law and literature are forever intertwined.

Extra Week 6

In case of presentations and make-up classes, if necessary

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