Poetry in Process

Catalog description

Many distinguished poets have taught at Cornell. In this course we'll focus on three, all of them widely acclaimed: A. R. Ammons, Alice Fulton, Ishion Hutchinson. A. R. Ammons is best known for charting the interplay of scientific and spiritual phenomena, in poems ranging from brief lyrics to book-length epics written on adding machine tape. Alice Fulton, who was Ammons's student, carries on his interests in science and spirituality while bringing to them a distinctively feminist perspective. Born in Jamaica, Ishion Hutchinson writes poems that explore the fraught relations between geography and history in the light of colonial violence. We'll survey each poet's work from earliest to most recent phases, paying special attention to their development of new techniques and original visions. Students may write poems as well as critical essays responding to the poets' work.