The editors of Alchemy Spoon have participated in ModPo and recently asked me to write an essay about ModPo for their 7th issue (published in August 2022). My goal in this piece is to reconsider the initial backlash against MOOCs (2012-13) in relation to the controversy around online teaching and...
This nice “Choice” review is being published in the September 2022 issue. Here is a sneak preview:
Grzegorz Wróblewski will have a new book out soon—titled ‘Dear Beloved Humans.’ Here is my blurb: ‘In this book find short brilliant grim verse tales — such as the tale of Anne who lives inside her white dress, or that of the poet who is the only one (including former...
I’m honored to have been the faculty mentor/advisor for Cosmic Writers (aka Word Camp). Click here for a Penn Today article about the project. Cosmic Writers brings free creative writing education to school-aged children. In the photo below: recent graduates Rowana Miller and Manoj Simha lead the new nonprofit supported by...
Among my favorite pieces of prose is the long opening paragraph of Roger Angell’s New Yorker essay “In the Fire.” Here it is:
A review of The Difference Is Spreading has been published the Los Angeles Review of Books. Click HERE to read it.
Lisa Yau was a participant in a seminar for Philadelphia teachers I taught a few years ago. I’m excited & proud of what she has done with the project she undertook in our poetry seminar. https://theteachersinstitute.org/2022/05/02/teacher-artist-and-students-convert-a-south-philly-wall-into-an-expression-of-culture-and-belonging/
Ian Morrisson sent me a chapbook of poems. It is in part a response to my essay on paraphonotextuality published a few years ago in AModern. Among Ian’s poems I found this one!
Matvei Yankelevich, Ahmad Almallah, Kevin Platt & I discussed Matvei’s marvelous new book of poems, “Dead Winter.” Ahmad’s students joined us and toward the end got wonderfully involved in the conversation.
Wendy Bach returned to Penn (she was my student in the late 80s/early 90s) and I had the honor of hosting & moderating a conversation with her about her forthcoming book “Prosecuting Poverty, Criminalizing Care.” Here’s a photo of us before the event. Below is a link to the video...
A review of my book 1960 has been published in Leonardo — by Jan Baetens. It’s insightful and detailed and — I’m happy to say — really gets what I’m trying to do in this study of a turning-point year. HERE‘s the link to the review.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (Columbia University Press, 2021). He is currently writing a book about online pedagogy. He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 265,000 participants in 192 countries since 2012.
Founder/Faculty Director, Kelly Writers House—intro video ][ events calendar
Convener/teacher, “ModPo.” an open online course on modern & contemporary U.S. poetry—overview of the course ][ intro video
Publisher of Jacket2 magazine—my Jacket2 commentary series ][ "First Readings"
Producer/host, PoemTalk podcast series—co-sponsored by Kelly Writers House & the Poetry Foundation
Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing—Creative Writing ][ RealArts internships ]
Co-founder & co-director of PennSound—50,000 files ][ 15 million downloads annually
Teacher & host, "Kelly Writers House Fellows"—since 1999 ][ Susan Sontag, John Ashbery, Jamaica Kincaid, Laurie Anderson, Adrienne Rich, Joan Didion, John Edgar Wideman & more
Teacher, "Representations of the Holocaust"—a course on survivor testimony ][ my holocaust site
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Cecilia Vicuna gets ready to perform at the Kelly Writers House, February 2017. Click on the image for a larger view.
PoemTalk’s crew took to the road, wandering pretty much as far west as one can go on this continent, to a place Philip Whalen called, in a poem’s subtitle, “the last of California” — Bolinas, coastal spot famous as A congenial writer’s retreat. Stephen Ratcliffe, Joanne Kyger, and Julia Bloch gathered there with Al Filreis to talk about Whalen. Our poem was indeed written in Bolinas, in 1968, and finished in Kyoto in 1969. It’s called “Life at Bolinas: The Last of California.” Whalen’s PennSound page includes a recording of his performance of this poem, the final poem he read at an event in Albuquerque in 1987. Click HERE to read program notes and LISTEN TO THE SHOW.
ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult." We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It's much easier than it seems!
Click HERE to enroll.
Even though we are currently in our offseason ("SloPo"), you are welcome to enroll now. You will have access to the entire ModPo site. Explore; meet some ModPo'ers who are conversing in the site year-round; read poems and watch videos. Then join us again when the intense "symposium mode" starts up again in September.
Yes, the next live, interactive 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 9, 2017, and will conclude on November 20, 2017. Al Filreis will be in touch with you by email before the September 9 start of the course with all the information you'll need to participate. If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team at modpo@writing.upenn.edu.
During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups.
If you are curious about the ModPo team, type "ModPo YouTube introduction" into Google or your favorite search engine, and watch the 20-minute introductory video. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end.
ModPo LINKS:
enroll [free]: LINK
Facebook group: LINK
Twitter feed: LINK
intro video: LINK
YouTube videos: LINK
