"'no: tongue breaks': Poetry of the Fragment" with Dan Rosenberg In this generative workshop, we will explore the power of poems that we receive as fragmentary or broken. The subjects of our discussions will range from the unwitting matriarch of the fragment, Sappho, to the violently lapidary short lyrics of Paul Celan, to the contemporary […]
The German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, before his death in 1940 when he took his own life to avoid being murdered as a Jew in Europe, wrote: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Urging us to recognize the complexity of historical events, Benjamin asks that […]
Given contemporary poetry’s largely secular leanings, it’s not surprising that few poets today celebrate supernatural miracles, overtly religious experiences, or Divinity, in general. But how does one explain contemporary poetry’s tendency to insist on profound meaning in the ordinary—a tendency that, at times, appears to border on obsession? In this workshop, we will look at […]
