In 1945, Aimé Césaire wrote: "Poetic knowledge is characterized by humankind splattering the object with all its mobilized richness."
In 1955, Theodor Adorno wrote: "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, and this corrodes the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today."
In Poetry as Cultural Critique, we will ask: what is the splattering of the object? What knowledge comes out of poetry? And in the twenty-first century, what disasters and atrocities can be written "after"? The course looks a poetry from the long twentieth century in a global context. Student writing on topics is critical, creative, and creative/critical. We'll explore 20th and 21st century poetry in the contexts and through the frameworks of cultural critique of the postwar and decolonization. We'll consider the vibrant scene of contemporary poetry as well, looking at works experimental in both form and content.