Lyric Genre-Benders

In this course, we will ask what constitutes poetic language and how to identify the lyric as a genre. Are there discernible traits that lyric poems share, or is poetry, like pornography, something we recognize only when we see it? We will have a special focus on how genre is related to gender, and consider the historical precedent of poetry calling readers to its defense. Discussion will revolve around essays on lyric theory both classic and contemporary, prose poems by Baudelaire and Davis, fragments by Sappho, and finally, poems by Basho, Dickinson, Rankine, and more.