Have you checked out the commentary series I co-edit with Brian Reed* and Craig Dworkin? It’s called “First Readings.” We ask five critics & poet-critics to write up short initial responses to a supposedly “difficult” poem: https://jacket2.org/commentary/first-readings . * ModPo’ers will remember Brian’s terrific essay about Caroline Bergvall’s “VIA” we read...
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, Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60; 1960: When Art & Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II & Remade the Modern (2021); and The Difference Is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems. His new book is The Classroom & the Crowd: Poetry & the Promise of Digital Community (2025). He has taught a massive open online course, "ModPo," to 315,000 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.