LARTS 313 — Contemporary World Poetry

3 credits
Fall
Yesenia Montilla

Prerequisite: LARTS 112 . Poetry as an art form is universal, yet the world is made up of boundaries and borders. How do the diverse voices of world poetry present grief, love, war, death, birth, alienation, racism, feminism, and nationhood? Do the poems within each distinct boundary and border develop their own poetic craft and form? How? Why? In this course we will examine contemporary works of poetry in translation by poets from around the world. The intention of this course is to expand our understanding of poetic voices outside of the American experience. How do we encounter and ingest poetic works from other places and frameworks, and how does our own seeing distort or embrace our own social, political, and cultural placements? We will read poems in both free verse and forms, such as ghazal, villanelle, sestina, sonnet, and haiku. Some of the poets we will travel with will be Pablo Neruda, Rainer Marie Rilke, Wislawa Szymborska, Agha Shahid Ali, Anna Akhmatova, Mahmoud Darwish, Hajiya ‘Yar Shehu, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Nazim Hikmet, Federico Garcia Lorca, Kamau Braithwaite, and Nancy Morejón. Translation will play an important part of our learning; if poetry at its essence is universal, then we will ask what is lost and what is gained in the process of translation and how does this transliteration affect these texts.