”a poem cannot stop a bullet
stop a bomb
stop terror on your doorstep”
So what can a poem do? What can you do with a poem? And what is a poem in the first place?
If ”the poem is a dream telling you its time” (Marwa Helal), how do we recognize it?
Can a poem be fun? Can it be sung?
And what about ”American”?
We’ll explore these and many other questions along with a fair amount of poetry from a wide range of poets connected to the US in one way or another - including the classics, but also many contemporary poets (if you have any favourites, let me know!).
We’ll certainly do a lot of analysis and interpretation, putting language into the focus, and we’ll include some more creative exploration of poetry – sound, music, historical context, emotions, violence, death, sexuality, gender, happiness, nonsense, and other such vital aspects of poetry.
”a poem cannot stop a bullet
but can swallow the hate and spit back
a sonnet” (Darius V. Daughtry) |
