This course investigates several important moments in avant-garde writing of the 20th and 21st centuries, namely Modernism & the European Avant-garde, North American Language writing, and avant-gardes of the Pacific region. Students will read and write in the traditions of the avant-garde, considering along the way such questions as:
–To what ends have poets worked in avant-garde forms? What are the contexts within which they’ve worked and created? What have been their aesthetic and political intentions? These will vary in fascinating ways.
–How did the European avant-garde use/appropriate non-European sources? How do Pacific-region poets use/appropriate European sources?
–What other artistic movements coincided with these in poetry? There will be in-class presentations on visual artists (Picasso, Braque, Kandinsky, John Pule, for example) and composers (Stravinsky, Schoenberg, John Cage, Len Lye).
–How can we use these methods to our own ends? What are the strengths and limitations of avant-garde approaches?
SLOs
–To learn histories of the avant-garde in early 20th century Europe, mid- to late-20th century USA, and 21st century Pacific;
–To acquire techniques of reading and creating work inspired by these avant-garde movements;
–To consider intersections between aesthetics and politics by way of avant-garde writing (with some consideration of other arts);
–To critique creatively, and to creatively critique.
Course requirements: Weekly class blog to respond to the readings & listenings & viewings; blog creative exercises; oral reports on other arts; a short critical essay at mid-term, and a longer project at the end (either a collection of creative works or a seminar paper, depending on the student’s main focus). Students will be required to attend a relevant concert/reading and to visit a museum during the semester.
Readings will include the following:
Jerome Rothenberg & Pierre Joris, editors. Poems for the Millennium: Volume One; Westlake: Poems by Wayne Kaumualii Westlake (1947-1984); Lehua Taitano, A Bell Made of Stones; Lisa Samuels, Anti M.; Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde; POST-MODERN POETRIES (VERSE, guest edited by Jerome McGann).