CRW 5331 - FALL 2026 - WILSON

“It takes me so long to formulate a thought worthy of articulation, and it takes me so long to articulate my opinions in a form worthy to call thought,” C.D. Wright said in a 2014 conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye and Juan Felipe Herrera, her fellow chancellors of the Academy of American Poets, about revision. In two years, she would make her transition and leave us to sort out how she was able over several collections to constellate a host of speakers who were at once “one big self”—many-throated and polyphonic yet singularly searing—and one with others. This semester, we will examine the twenty-first-century epic tradition through a host of debut and second collections and historicize their lineages as we refine our own in this moment of such profound chaos, grief, inhumanity, and uncertainty. What makes a contemporary (anti-)elegy timely and timeless? We will plumb that question's depths until we find a deeper love of our big selves inside our singular wordcraft. In addition to Wright, other master-poets we'll engage may include Desiree Bailey, William Brewer, Meg Day, Danielle Cadena Deulan, torrin a. greathouse, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Tyehimba Jess, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Donika Kelly, Megan Pinto, Max Ritvo, Taije Silverman, Jake Skeets, Mosab Abu Toha, Paul Tran, Javier Zamora, and our own Kaveh Akbar, Kerry James Evans, Diamond J. Forde, Yolanda Franklin, Nicholas Goodly, Aimee Seu, and Jane Springer.