Wednesday, December 6, 5:00PM - 7:00PM

Meeting will take place in the Poetry Center's Alumni Room, Room 205; limit 12 students. General registration is now open. Register here.  

Since long before Julia Kristeva coined the term “intertextuality,” poets across the globe have been in dialogue and interdependent relationship, shaping their poems and poetics in response to those of others. Whether homage, critique, or anything between, an intertext poses interpretative questions with profound political implications: Why choose to be in conversation with this poet? With this poem? In this form? To what end? And how to foreground that conversation, or signal it at all? How do these choices position us aesthetically, socially, and historically? In this class, we will consider these questions by reading a selection of intertexts, written by a range of contemporary poets, including Lynn Emanuel, Toi Derricotte, Roger Reeves, Natasha Trethewey, and Ocean Vuong, and drafting an intertext of our own at the end of class.