Kresge College - Winter 1999

A creative writing course grounded in the study of modern and postmodern poetics and movements. The course will draw upon experimental, hybrid, and avant-garde practices including projective, performance, language, and postmodern feminist poetries. Critical and creative writing required, with an emphasis on creative. Some creative writing experience recommended.

We will focus upon poetry but will also read and write in experimental forms which shift or dissolve the boundaries between poetry and other genres such as fiction, drama, and criticism. We'll explore such forms as the lyrical essay, the prose poem, the long poem, "sudden" fiction, and performance poetry.

Techniques which are specific to other art forms (specifically visual, music, and performance) will be studied and applied to our own work. In short, the class will explore hybiridity and the co-mixing of genres while acquiring knowledge of twentieth-century poetics and projects which have extended and improvised upon conventional forms. Students will select (or create) a form in which to complete a longer final project.

Among the poets and critics we will read (and whose recorded performances we will listen to) are Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, John Cage, Denise Levertov, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Audre Lorde, Marilyn Hacker, Jack Spicer, Nathaniel Mackey, Rosemarie Waldrop, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Joan Retellack, Bob Perelman, and others.

This 3-unit, upper division course addresses the fundamentals of effective observation, interpretation and writing in the natural sciences (the majors of Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Computer Engineering/Science, Earth Sciences, Mathematics, Ocean Sciences and Physics). Students will engage in response groups and faculty conferences to produce a collaborative trail guide and a lab report or essay which may be in conjunction with an assignment from a course in the student's own discipline. Enrollment limited to 15.

Interested students can email me, Roger Bunch, at roger_bunch@macmail.ucsc.edu.

Revised 7/26/04.