Very Short Poetry: From Tanka to Twitter

Though implicit and explicit claims have been made for the novel as a universal form, the novel does not match the very short poem in terms of ubiquity across history and cultures. Reading a set of very short poems each week, we will move across ages and continents, from Greek and Latin epigrams to the Japanese “haiku” and its precursors, from the early modern sonnet to experiments with poetic constraints in the computer age. Primary sources will be juxtaposed to touchstones of theory, neat ideas, and provocative essays. All readings available in translation as well as in the original.