{"id":1376,"date":"2024-10-01T10:59:54","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T14:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1376"},"modified":"2024-11-04T20:44:46","modified_gmt":"2024-11-05T01:44:46","slug":"documentary-poetics-reading-list-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/10\/01\/documentary-poetics-reading-list-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Trauma and the Self in Documentary Poetics: A Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"

I. Secondary\/Theoretical Works<\/span><\/p>\n

Ehlers, Sarah. \u201cIntroduction\u201d and \u201cI. Documentary.\u201d <\/span>Left of Poetry: Depression America and the Formation of Modern Poetics<\/span><\/i>. The University of North Carolina Press, 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

Evans, Olivia Milroy. \u201cEkphrasis as Evidence: Forensic Rhetoric in Contemporary Documentary Poetry.\u201d <\/span>Word & Image<\/span><\/i> (London. 1985), vol. 37, no. 2, 2021, pp. 142\u201351, <\/span>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/02666286.2020.1866969<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leong, Michael. <\/span>Contested Records: The Turn to Documents in Contemporary North American Poetry.<\/span><\/i> University of Iowa Press, 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michaels, Walter Benn. \u201cFormal Feelings.\u201d <\/span>The Beauty of a Social Problem<\/span><\/i>, University of Chicago Press, 2015, <\/span>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.7208\/chicago\/9780226210438.003.0001<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nelson, Maggie. \u201cAll That Is the Case: Some Thoughts on Fact in Nonfiction and Documentary Poetry.\u201d <\/span>Lit from Within<\/span><\/i>, 1st ed., Ohio University Press, 2011, pp. 154-.<\/span><\/p>\n

II. Primary Sources<\/span><\/p>\n

Jess, Tyehimba. <\/span>Olio<\/span><\/i>. First edition., Wave Books, 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nelson, Maggie. <\/span>Jane: A Murder. <\/span><\/i>Soft Skull, 2016.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Osman, Jena. <\/span>Public Figures<\/span><\/i>. 1st ed., Wesleyan University Press, 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n

Smith, Patricia. <\/span>Blood Dazzler: Poems<\/span><\/i>. Coffee House Press, 2008.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wright, C. D., and Deborah Luster. <\/span>One Big Self: An Investigation<\/span><\/i>. Copper Canyon Press, 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n

III. Academic Journal<\/span><\/p>\n

Word & Image.<\/span><\/i> Taylor & Francis., est. 1985. (Survey 2023)<\/span><\/p>\n

IV. Keywords<\/span><\/p>\n

documentary, poetics, genre, subversion, representation<\/span><\/p>\n

V. Initial Inquiry Framework<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve admittedly been struggling to decide on a topic for my thesis, as there is so much that interests me, and so much that I could satisfyingly write about. The original topic I thought of just had too many answered questions, and would not produce an original or innovative final paper. So, I started thinking about what I wished I could\u2019ve written more about in past classes, and I began reflecting on a class I took my first year of college, U.S. modernist poetry. I enjoyed this class so much because as a songwriter I\u2019m interested in ways to use the poetic form and what can be conveyed through existing structures. In the class we read Muriel Rukeyser\u2019s <\/span>The Book of the Dead<\/span><\/i>, a documentary poetry collection about a West Virginian mining company\u2019s deadly conditions. Modernist forms of poetry have always been my favorite because they push the boundaries of the genre, and this was no exception. Using poetry to both represent and expand upon existing images and events interests me because of the layers poetry must use to incite meaning-making. Documentary poetics that deal with crime are particularly demonstrative of this idea, as both the event and the poetry itself hide aspects of the whole that can only be uncovered through analysis of context and genre formation. Hopefully through an exploration of this genre I can solidify some of these ideas about the form, function, and how real-life events and poetics converge through the inner workings of both.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Update:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In preparing the Updated Reading List for my projected thesis, I tried to hone in on specific themes I want to explore in my reading of documentary poetics. The first collection I knew I wanted to read was <\/span>Jane: A Murder<\/span><\/i> by Maggie Nelson, about the murder of her aunt. From there, two areas of thought emerged in the kinds of poetry I want to read: poetry about identity and poetry about traumatic events. Nelson\u2019s work encapsulates both. From there I chose <\/span>Blood Dazzler<\/span><\/i> by Patricia Smith about the events and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and <\/span>One Big Self<\/span><\/i> by C.D. Wright, which explores the Louisiana Prison Systems through poetry informed by interview. These two collections explore trauma and emotional expression through documentary poetics, but the following two collections merge this idea with concepts of identity and the self. <\/span>Olio<\/span><\/i> by Jess Tyehimba explores the lives of unrecorded African American performers through the events of the Civil War up to World War I, and <\/span>Public Figures<\/span><\/i> by Jena Osman that aims to express the perspective of the eyes of statues of public figures. I hope by reading these 5 poetry collections I\u2019ll form an avenue for which my thesis can continue to head toward with a clear purpose in topic and theme.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I. Secondary\/Theoretical Works Ehlers, Sarah. \u201cIntroduction\u201d and \u201cI. Documentary.\u201d Left of Poetry: Depression America and the Formation of Modern Poetics. The University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Evans, Olivia Milroy. \u201cEkphrasis as Evidence: Forensic Rhetoric in Contemporary Documentary Poetry.\u201d Word & Image (London. 1985), vol. 37, no. 2, 2021, pp. 142\u201351, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1080\/02666286.2020.1866969.\u00a0 Leong, Michael. Contested … Continue reading Trauma and the Self in Documentary Poetics: A Reading List<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}