Poetry and Poetics Workshop (P&P)

The Poetry and Poetics Workshop aims to take advantage of Houston's rich literary resources by bringing together poets, critics, and scholars from Rice, the University of Houston, and other local institutions. In addition to creating space for conversations about poetry and poetics, the group will explore connections with Houston's vibrant arts scene by focusing on the relationship between poetry and other art forms. Moreover, our ambition is to combine an attention to the history of poetry and poetics with considerations of the contemporary moment, looking at transformations in reading practices, received forms, translation, and myriad other subjects. Our activities will include sessions devoted to reading new work, presentations by local faculty of work in progress, special events, and invited lectures or readings by poets and critics.

Upcoming Events

November 6, 2009, 7 p.m.
Tone Poems: Poetic Sequence and Poetic Series
James Logenbach, the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English, University of Rochester
Inprint  House, 1520 West Main
Poet, critic, and scholar of modernist poetry, Logenbach draws from Tennyson, Pound, Eliot, and Susan Howe to address what is poetry and how the idea of the poetic series depends upon tone.  This talk is co-sponsored by Fondren Library's Cherry Lecture Series.

December 8, 2009, 7 p.m.
Edward A. Snow, the Mary Gibbs Joens Chair for the Humanities and Professor of English, Rice University
Menil Collection, 1414 Sul Ross
Snow, translator of the complete works of Rainer Maria Rilke for FSG, reads from his newly published Selected Rilke, in association with the exhibit of drawings, Cy Twombly: Treatise on the Veil.

February 12, 2010, 4 p.m.
Poetry is Dead, Long Live Poetry
Maureen McLane, Associate Professor of English, NYU,
A contributing editor at the Boston Review and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing, McLain will speak about the state of the art of contemporary poetry, drawing from her epxerience as a poetry reviewer, and from the perspective of contemporary poetry's relationship to Romanticism. Hosted by Inprint. At 7 p.m. McClane will read from her debut collection of poetry Sample Life  (FSG) at Brazos Bookstore.

2008-09 Events

16 October, Thursday, 2:30 p.m.
Poetry and Poetics Seminar
1133 Alice Pratt Brown
Matteo D'Amico, composer
A  special seminar  with D'Amico to be held for Rice University poets and composers. Click here for further details cocerning the premiere American performance of D'Amico's Stabat mater on Friday, October 17. See Rice News preview (10/09/08) of this event.

1 December, Monday, 5 p.m.
Form, New Formalism, and the Problem of Reading Poetry
English Department Lounge, Herring Hall
Cary Wolfe, the Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English, Rice University
Herring Hall 255 (English Department Lounge)
This discussion forum takes up Wolfe's recent essay "The Idea of Observation at Key West, or, Systems Theory, Poetry, and Form Beyond Formalism" (NLH 29 (2008): 259-276) and Marjorie Levinson's "What is New Formalism?" (PMLA 122.2 (2007): 558-569) to start a conversation about how we read poetry (and literature more generally) in the wake of the rise and fall of recent literary critical approaches. If, for poets, the "new formalism" refers to the (purportedly) radical resurgence of traditional form and metrics among writers in the early 90s, critics too have been waging their own skirmishes about how literary form matters in an age dominated by strategies that often seem to displace and replace literature as an object of study. How can we think about and with the particularity of aesthetic objects without isolating them from historical or social concerns? 
Download the flyer .

24 February, Tuesday, 4 p.m. Faces of the Sonnet David Mikics, Professor of English, University of Houston 255 Herring Hall (English Department Lounge) Mikics is most recently the author of A New Handbook of Literary Terms (Yale University Press). His new bookThe Art of the Sonnet (co-written with Stephen Burt) is forthcoming from Harvard University Press.

13 March, Friday, 4 p.m. The Hut of Poetry (click to listen) Dan Beachy-Quick, Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing, Colorado State University 119 Humanities Building The author of poetry and prose inspired by Melville’s Moby-Dick offers a series of prose meditations on the influences, obsessions, and styles of reading practiced by a poet for whom American literary history is alive and well. After a talk at Rice he will read from his work at Brazos Bookstore at 7:30 p.m. Beachy-Quick is the author of A Whaler's Dictionary (prose) and North True South Bright, Spell, and Mulberry (poetry).  Download the flyer here