“on i go / not toward or away / up until now it was day, next day / up until now in a rush to prove / but now i only move to move” — fiona apple, fetch the bolt cutters (2020)
We listen to our favorite songs over and over, rewatch the same shows for the hundredth time in a row—we are always coming back to what we know. What is that compulsion? Is it because these things give us comfort, or because there’s something about them that we just can’t fully put down? In this five-week online workshop, we will explore how sensations of continuity and expansion can get worked out in poetic cycles or extended projects—small bodies of work which, like houses, need every room in order to function. We’ll read cycles of poetry by poets both contemporary and classic, while also drawing inspiration from music. The focus, ultimately, is to shift our thinking away from making “a collection of poems” to a more self-contained body of work, as much the sum of its parts as all the individual pieces.
(Tile was created using a photo of Zoe Leonard’s postcards of Niagra Falls installation)
Works engaged with included:
Fiona Apple, Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator)
Judy Grahn, A Woman Is Talking To Death
Robert Balun, Traces
Lucille Clifton, Good Woman
June Jordan, Kissing God Goodbye
Eileen Myles, I Must Be Living Twice
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, There Should Be Flowers