The Poetry of Witness and Resistance This course will explore poetries of witness and resistance, studying the genre as a source and inspiration for poems the students will write. Using model poems from the 20th and 21st centuries, written or translated into English, we will examine theories and poetic practices of bearing witness and mounting resistance to cultural oppressions and social injustices, asking how the poem both contextualizes, resists, and repairs perceived injustice or imbalance. Areas of study include the Harlem Renaissance, Black Arts Movement, and poems in response to various anti-war, and pro-social justice movements in the United States, Europe, and South America. Poets whose work we will study include Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Etheridge Knight, Marilyn Nelson, Ai, Cornelius Eady, Charles Simic, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Symborska, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, and others. Through a combination of analytical discourse and poetry critique workshops, our aim is write poems of aesthetic and cultural value in dialogue with the poetic traditions of witness and resistance.
Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser by 
Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose by 
SOS/Calling All Black People : a Black Arts Movement Reader by 
