Introductory description

This module explores the relationships between poetry and visual art in the USA in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Ekphrasis
Visual Poetry
Modernism: Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams
New York c. 1960: Frank O'Hara and Ted Berrigan
Assemblage
The Film-Poem
Vito Acconci, Hannah Weiner and 0-9
Concrete Poetry
Minimalist Art and Poetry
Hand and Machine: Larry Eigner, Steve McCaffery, Cy Twombly, Robert Grenier
Uncreative Writing and Conceptual Art

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate sophisticated knowledge of American artistic and poetic avant-gardes.
• Analyse and critically appraise the relationship between the visual and the poetic in the 20th and 21st centuries.
• Examine and critically evaluate modern and contemporary poetry.
• Formulate complex ideas about art and poetry for different audiences and contexts.

Indicative reading list

Katherine Shingler, ‘Framing the Text’ in Lucy Bolton et al, ed., Framed!: Essays in French Studies, Oxford and Berlin: Peter Lang, 2007
Willard Bohn, Reading Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, London: Bloomsbuery, 2018
Marjorie Perloff, ‘A Cessation of Resemblances: Stein/Picasso/Duchamp’ in David Bradshaw, Laura Marcus and Rebecca Roach, eds, Moving Modernisms: Motion, Technology, and Modernity, Oxford: OUP, 2016
Peter Halter, The Revolution in the Visual Arts and the Poetry of Williams Carlos Williams, Cambridge: CUP, 1994
Marjorie Perloff, Frank O’Hara: Poet Among Painters, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977
Russell Ferguson, In Memory of My Feelings: Frank O’Hara and American Art, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999
William C. Seitz, The Art of Assemblage, New York: MoMA, 1961
Robert Sheppard, The Meaning of Form in Contemporary Innovative Poetry, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
Willard Maas, ed., ‘Poetry and the Film: A Symposium,’ Film Culture, 29, 1963, pp. 55-63
P. Adams Sitney, The Cinema of Poetry, Oxford: OUP, 2015
John David Rhodes, Meshes of the Afternoon, London: Palgrave Macmillan & BFI, 201
Gwen Allen, Artists' Magazines: an alternative space for art, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015
Craig Dworkin, ed., Language to Cover a Page: the early writings of Vito Acconci, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006
Hannah Weiner, Hannah Weiner’s Open House, ed. with introduction by Patrick F. Durgin, Berkeley, Cal: Kenning Editions, 2007
Marjorie Perloff, Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010
Willard Bohn, Reading Visual Poetry, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010
Mary Ellen Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry: A World View, Indiana University Press, 1969
Gavin Delahunty and Liz Kotz, eds, Carl Andre: Poems, JRP Ringier, 2013
Paul Stephens, Absence of Clutter: Minimal Writing as Art and Literature, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2020
Sarah Juliet Lauro and Lindsay Waggoner Riordan, ‘Into the White: Larry Eigner’s Meta-Physical Poetics’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 34:1, 2014
Jennifer Bartlett and George Hart, eds, Momentous Inclusions: The Life and Work of Larry Eigner, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2020
Mary Jacobus, Reading Cy Twombly: Poetry in Paint, Princeton and Oxford; Princeton University Press, 2016
Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing, New York: Columbia University Press, 2011

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

• Demonstrate a grasp of the history and theory of relations between visual art and poetry
• Demonstrate detailed knowledge of the works studied and their contexts
• Deploy these ideas critically in relation to other forms of art and culture
• sophisticated visual and textual analysis
• critical analysis of cultural artefacts in relation to historical and theoretical frameworks

Transferable skills

• initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• familiarity with essential ICT skills
• ability to collaborate effectively with others
• show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• ability to formulate a sustained argument
• think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• bibliographical skills at an appropriate level