Two new close-reading videos are now available at ModPo. They were filmed by Chris Martin & Zach Carduner on March 9, 2017 — as Emily Harnett, Ali Castleman, and I were joined by Morgan curator Carolyn Vega. As we recorded improvised close readings of Dickinson’s “Alone and in a Circumstance”...
Poet-performer-teacher Jake Marmer taught a course on modern poetry at a high school in Palo Alto in the fall of 2016. But this time he and his students joined ModPo—and so the poems they read, and also their discussions, were part of a huge interpretive community. He paid close attention...
ModPo fans and friends will perhaps be happy to know that we have now added Tracie Morris’s response to Stein’s Tender Buttons to the Stein chapter of ModPoPLUS: https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo/resources/vizXG Click the image for a larger view.
Recently, in honor of William J. (Billy Joe) Harris, Tracie Morris performed five poems. Now Dylan Leahy of the PennSound staff has segmented the video I shot of the performance. These five video segments are available at Jacket2 magazine HERE.
Maggie Ball, Eleanor Smagarinsky, and Alice Allan convened to record a collaborative close reading of Gabriel Ojeda-Sague’s poem “Any” from his book Oil & Candle. This video has been added to ModPo’s CCCR (Community Collaborative Close Readings) syllabus. To read the poem, click on the image above for a larger...
I’m pleased to announce that a Wallace Stevens discussion group has just formed in ModPo—moderated by Sanjeev Naik. Click HERE to go directly to the discussion. If you are not enrolled in ModPo yet (it’s free), click HERE to enroll.
Dan Bergmann’s father Michael wrote a piece on Dan’s involvement with ModPo, and HERE‘s the link. Excerpts: In September of 2012 there were not yet many humanities courses on Coursera (remember Dan wants to be made to compare ideas, so the humanities are better for that than many hard science...
ModPo filming at the Morgan Library last night (March 9, 2017)—in the Emily Dickinson exhibit. We made two films of close readings, while standing (with Morgan curator Carolyn Vega) next to the manuscripts of the poems we discussed.
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
Click on the image for information about the book.
