I’m finishing up additions to the ModPo site in prep for the new ModPo season starting 9/9/17 (next Saturday). Here is the current list of Tracie Morris materials you’ll find at the end of chapter 9.3/week 10 of the “ModPoPLUS” syllabus (an extra/supplemental syllabus parallel to the main schedule). Go...
New to ModPo for fall ’17—a video discussion of Tracie Morris’s “Enclosed,” one of her poems in response to Gertrude Stein’s “Tender Buttons.” Tracie Morris herself joined us for this discussion. Here’s the link to the video inside the ModPo site: https://www.coursera.org/learn/modpo/resources/vmyjg — For access to this & all ModPo...
Today in KWH’s Wexler Studio I had the great pleasure of convening & moderating a new episode of PoemTalk. Amber Rose Johnson, Tracie Morris, Alexandria Johnson & I discussed six sections of NourbeSe Philip’s “Zong!” (It will be a few months before this episode will be available.)
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...
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.
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.