“I keep forgetting it’s not a personal defeat to be so sick. / What was once a mind for music and words has become an amateur mad-scientist, / an expert at needle-gauging—butterfly 25 if you’re going for the hand— / an evolutionary step up from rat or chimp for drug protocols called obnoxiously / ‘cocktails’ by the reading public (a joke on gays, I’m certain)” Excerpt from “What Calendars Have Become,” HIV, Mon Amour — Tory Dent
Sometimes poems need room to ramble, to frolic, to breathe and wander in unknown directions before the threads they want to follow become clear. In this five-week, in-person workshop, we'll take our time to wander alongside poems that ask us to pack a bag and a light snack, maybe something comfy to change into, while they unfold over the course of many pages. We'll consider the political implications of taking up extended space in a poetry landscape that is perhaps more popularly concerned with brevity. We'll also challenge each other to pull our own poetic inspiration to the end of its spool, leaning into the expanse that a long poem invites us to explore.
Works engaged with include (but are not limited to):
Eileen Myles, Not Me; evolution; a “Working Life.”
Tiana Clark, I Can’t Talk About The Trees Without The Blood.
Vanessa Angélica Villareal, Beast Meridian.
Frank Stanford, Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You.
Judy Grahn, A Woman Is Talking To Death.
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, im alive. it hurts. i love it.
Tory Dent, HIV, Mon Amour; Black Milk.
Etel Adnan, Time; Surge; Night.
Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrim Bell.
Andrew McMillan, Physical.