Poets, Poetry, and Politics

The award of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature to Bob Dylan ignited a lively debate about who is, and who is not, a poet. Historically, who were deemed poets, what was their function? What do their poems do and how do they work? Do they foment revolution or “make nothing happen,” as Auden once wrote? How does the poet aspire to a unique, individual voice even as he or she may (be seen to) best represent a constituency? This course relates the poetic act to political action and interrogates the commonly aired contention that politics makes for bad poetry.