truthfully the lie of it all is much more honest, because I invented it.
—lady gaga, the prelude pathétique
When broken apart, the word “re-vision” implies a kind of newness, seeing something familiar again as if for the first time. A poem, like the past, cannot be boiled down to one objective version—rather, an experience can be told and retold endlessly from different perspectives, allowing for many unique interpretations to orbit around the story’s heart. We see this tradition at work in poetry and music alike, from poem cycles and persona poems to folk songs and the blues. In this seven-week online workshop, we’ll first draw on various poetic and musical structures to explore the consequences of re-visiting / re-viewing / re-telling different versions of our past across many poems, in an attempt to get at the heart of our memories. From there, we’ll construct our own unique poetic landscapes, no matter how fantastic or surreal, to re-view our past and ultimately re-vision our future. To be clear, the goal is not to “revise” the poem-object in the traditional sense, but more consciously to catalogue the symbols, structures and landscapes that make up the stuff of our poems. Essentially, what do we keep going back to—and why?
(Polaroid of Douglas Rogerson’s installation, Through & Through, Summer ‘20)
Works engaged with included:
Traditional & contemporary versions of Folk songs & the Blues from the American South
Suzane-Lori Parks, The America Play
Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha, Exilée / Temps Morts
Laura Grace Ford, Savage Messiah
Andrew McMillan, Physical
Tory Dent, HIV, Mon Amour; Black Milk
Cynthia Cruz, The Glimmering Room; Ruin
Zoe Leonard, i want a president & Eileen Myles, “Acceptance Speech” from evolution