ENGL 237NReading and Writing Documentary Poetry

3 credits · English · Penn State

You've probably heard of documentary photographs and documentary films, but you may not be familiar with documentary poetry. In this course, we will discuss how poets can use letters, diaries, transcripts, and other materials to create poems that capture historical events and everyday life in order to bear witness to particular moments in time. An important element of the course will be the role of documenting our world in terms of social justice and ethical responsibility. Whether focusing on public education, poverty, race, class, disability, gender, environmentalism, or other subjects, documentary poets personalize issues that are typically represented with broader brushstrokes. As Paul Metres observes, documentary poets invite "the real life outside the poem" into the poem itself, thereby "testing" the boundaries of what Wallace Stevens called "the pressure of reality." We will begin by viewing and discussing documentary poetry within the context of photography and filmmaking. Next, we will read and discuss documentary poems, including persona, collage, and erasure poems. These readings will also include interviews with select documentary poets about their processes. An overview of poetry terminology, research methods, and the ethics of documentary art will provide you with the basis for composing your own documentary poems. The last third of the course will be spent writing and workshopping your original documentary poems.