Tracie Morris reads her poem “Enclosed,” written in response to Gertrude Stein’s “Tender Buttons” at an event in celebration of poet Billy Joe Harris’s 75th birthday in Brooklyn, NY on March 11, 2017. We are adding this poem to the ModPoPLUS syllabus in the Stein section of chapter 2.3 (week...
Here’s something you’ll find in ModPo’s collection of crowdsourced close readings: Raymond Maxwell, Colleen Knight, Anika Lani, and Mark Snyder meet by GoogleHangout to discuss Clark Coolidge’s “Blues for Alice” (in the context of Charlie Parker and more): link to YouTube. (Note that the discussion starts at 5:35.) If you...
Today we have added to ModPo a new video in which we do a collaborative close reading of Robert Creeley’s “The Language.” Anna Strong and I moderate a discussion that includes six ModPo regulars: Mandana, Arif, Shoshana, Nadia, Ray, and Alonna. They joined us, via “GoogleHangout,” from near and far....
ModPo Boston alert! We are gathering in Cambridge MA on May 18 for a Writers House “salon”-style evening, including a collaborative close reading of a poem. If you would like to join us, please write to modpo@writing.upenn.edu. Amaris Cuchanski will be one of the readers!
Today we are adding new materials to ModPo—on Naomi Replansky’s “On Not Writing.” This, according to Replansky herself (who is 99 years old as of this posting), is the last poem she will ever write, and, as the title suggests, is about that very cessation. The links below will work...
Every once in a while I get the urge to resist some of the many vast generalizations about what “massive open online courses” (MOOCs) are and can be. Twitter is a place for this counterarguing. Search by #MOOCs and find a combination of profit-minded hucksterism, single-minded higher-ed utopianism, and critics...
A 51-minute video of a collaborative close reading of Joanne Kyger’s poem “When I used to focus on the worries…” — a ModPo meet-up held at the San Francisco Center for the Book in January 2016.
Here are two of the many poetry postcards made for us by T. de los Reyes of Manila. T. has been a ModPo regular since 2012 and has served the community brilliantly as a Community TA (CTA) for five years. Click on either image for a larger view.
We at ModPo have now added to the “ModPoPLUS” syllabus an early poem of James Schuyler called “Salute.” Among the new resources is a filmed close reading of the poem, moderated by me, with Emily Harnett, Davy Knittle, and Gabriel Ojeda-Sague. If you are currently enrolled in ModPo you will...
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”...
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.