CRW 5331 - Spring 2025 - Wilson

In the first issue of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, editor Peter Johnson opined, “Just as black humor straddles the fine line between comedy and tragedy, so the prose poem plants one foot in prose, the other in poetry, both heels resting precariously on banana peels.” After surveying works of pioneers and innovators at the fin de siècle through the late twentieth century (Rimbaud, James Weldon Johnson, Fenton Johnson, Stein, Neruda, Brooks, Bishop, Simic, Giovanni, Mullen, et al.), we’ll explore innovative contemporary collections that exploit the long line without falling flat in the wake of A.R. Ammons’s Garbage, choosing from recent ones by Atsuro Riley, Layli Long Soldier, Tommy Pico, Ross Gay, Taylor Johnson, Desiree C. Bailey, and m.s. RedCherries. Lyric essays on the line by James Longenbach, Alyson Miller, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Cassandra Atherton, Paul Hetherington, and others also will animate our discussions of our own poems, which will be the central focus of this workshop. These readings aim to help students constellate a literary genealogy and converse with confidence about our relationships to the prose poem and other incarnations of the long line.