Ecstatic Alphabets: Poetry by Other Means

How to do things with words? How to do words with things? The latter is a question whose answers might prove as—if not more—compelling than its familiar inverse. Both are at the core of this course focusing on interdisciplinary works for which notions intrinsic to poetry serve as either springboard or endpoint. We will study contemporary examples as well as historical antecedents, and will experiment with producing genre-defying works that animate the written word. Among the strategies we will cover are verbivocovisual works, cut-ups and collage, sound poetry and concrete poetry, happenings, agitprop, poets theater, and dance.