[Wgcp-whc] WG--Poetics, first meeting

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

Dear group,

now that the new semester has shuddered to life, it is time for the 
Whitney Humanities Center Working Group in Contemporary Poetry and 
Poetics to reconvene.  The group ended last semester with a session 
devoted to Walt Whitman, perhaps the initiator of an American avant 
garde.  In fact, one of the issues that we discussed was how Whitman 
can arguably be seen as a proto-avant garde poet (or at least be said 
to have set the terms for such in the United States) and yet is often 
held up by conservative poets as simply the forefather of American 
poetry?  Is Whitman radical or is he the forerunner of the poetics 
of "official verse culture"?

Our first session of the semster will be a return to this discussion 
of Whitman with a focus on his poem "Song of Myself."  In conjnction 
with that we will also have a special meeting of the group at The 
Beinecke to look at the first edition of Leaves of Grass (printed by 
the poet himself) and other relevant primary materials. That meeting 
time will be decided on but the first meeting of the semester will be 
Fri Jan 28 at 1.45 in rm 116 at the Whitney Humanities Center.

This semester will be very exciting and we may have a number of guest 
speakers.  One that is definite at this point is the poet, translator, 
and provocateur Kent Johnson, slated for March.  

Hope to see everyone there on the 28th.

cheers,
R. Deming group secretary