ENGL435/LGBT459M – American Sexual Poetics Revisited

Because of our approach to this in depth study of American poetry, this section of 435 is titled “American Sexual Poetics Revisited.” Many of the “major,” most canonized poets in American traditions are widely recognized as lesbian, gay, or queer (Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, Hart Crane, Langston Hughes), and the various sexual dynamics of American literary history will contextualize our study as we begin by focusing on Whitman and Dickinson.

To encourage reflection upon the term “American poetry,” we’ll begin the semester with our reflections focused on musings by Gwendolyn Brooks, and begin thinking about what counts as “American” poetry by examining Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (to which we’ll return later in the semester) and Bruce Springsteen’s “American Skin (41 Shots).”

With Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” serving as background,
we’ll then engage in an intensive study of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer
inscriptions in American poetry. Doing so, this course will then examine the poetic
productions and cultural reproductions of poets such as the diverse group collected into the
Masquerade anthology, including these names you might well recognize (besides those
already mentioned): W. H. Auden, Willa Cather, Hart Crane, Countee Cullen, Alice Dunbar-
Nelson, H.D., Angeline Weld Grimké, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Amy
Lowell, Mina Loy, Claude McKay, Herman Melville, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Richard Bruce
Nugent, Muriel Rukeyser, George Santayana, May Sarton, Gertrude Stein, Henry David
Thoreau. Besides those, we will read Adrienne Rich, Mark Doty, Audre Lorde, Judy Grahn,
and Minnie Bruce Pratt, Allen Ginsberg, James Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, Frank O’Hara, May
Swenson, and Kay Ryan (former poet laureate). While we will probe ways in which LGBT or
queer expressions are inflected by issues of race, gender, class, and high/low culture, we
will especially scrutinize ways in which the performances and receptions of poets identified
(by themselves or others) as LGBT or queer may perpetuate, challenge, and modify cultural
mythologies about sexualities and their relevance to national, literary, artistic, aesthetic,
and political endeavors. Written assignments will be two 1-2 pp. close reading papers,
regular contributions to discussions online, and a proposal for and then production of a
longer, more ambitious essay, blog, or other website production (the equivalent of 6-9 pp.
paper) exploring in depth some aspect raised by our course of study.