Ellen Gwin Dr. Anton Vander Zee American Poetry 26 October 2022 Poetry for All Lili Pâquet’s article “Selfie-Help: The Multimodal Appeal of Instagram poetry” argues for Instagram’s poetry place within academia citing instagram poetry’s use of ekphrasis and rhetorical importance due to audience reception. Pâquet first argues for Instagram poetry’s ekphrastic nature […]
In Katelyn Roth’s critical article, “‘The Human Heart Speaking’: Trauma in Selected Poems From Lucille Clifton,” Roth argues that Clifton showcases her desire and ability to move past her traumatic experiences by reclaiming the experience through poetry. The poems that Roth focuses on specifically are, “moonchild,” the “shapeshifter” poems, and also the poem, “what did […]
The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E School of poetry is full of works that are notoriously challenging to unpack for readers who are used to more clear attempts at “representational” or “realistic” poems. I put these terms into quotation marks because, as most poets from this movement would attest, the very idea of representing ideas through language is problematic […]
I was browsing through the Addlestone book stacks looking for a suitable critical essay to examine for this week’s blog post when I discovered, in the Robert Lowell section, a work that delves into the craft and effect of poetic language. Admittedly, I was looking for a book on the feminist poetics in Adrienne Rich’s […]
In her writing on Carolyn Rodgers’ collection of poetry How I Got Ovah, Estella M. Sales examines Rodgers’ use of the phrase “how I got ovah” and its illustration of double meaning in Rodgers’ poetry. Sales begins by noting the traditional meaning of the “black colloquialism” as “how one has triumphed spiritually; how one has […]
Although the import of this passage can be minimized as rhetoric directed against Jewish businessmen in black communities, the fact is that anti-Semitism was a frequent feature of Black Arts poetry. Virtually every participating poet wrote at least one anti-Semitic poem, and some wrote more, though the level of virulence varied considerably. For Baraka it […]
In “Signifying “Afrika”: Gwendolyn Brooks’ Later Poetry,” an article published by the John Hopkins University Press, Annette Debo focuses on the establishment of African roots as one of the major sentiments of the Black Nationalism that affected Gwendolyn Brooks. Debo pays special attention to Brooks’ use of “Afrika” as an expansive signifier that changes […]
Rochelle A. Odon wrote an article on Nikki Giovanni and the role her poetry played in the Black Arts Movement. The Black Arts Movement called to redefine what it meant to be black, but disregarded individuality. Black women succumbed to what Odon calls a phallocentric ideology which omitted a black woman’s voice from the arts. […]