The poems that we will read in this course will demonstrate a connection between an economics of excess and a theory of magic. The Reading method of this course will rely on a genealogical approach rather than a chronological approach. This means that we will be looking back through millennia of poetry. We’ll begin with poems from the 21st century and much like Walter Benjamin’s angel of history who in its present moment is propelled into the future by a storm called progress while looking back at the debris of the past we too will look back through centuries of poetry. Reading somewhat like a flaneur, we will encounter poems from ancient Rome, Anglo-Saxon riddles, the Medieval world, the Romantic Poets, and Victorian poets through reading 20th and 21st century poetry with a particular slant toward the avant-garde. Readings will include selections from Ovid, Catullus, “The Dream of the Rood” poem, riddles from Aldhelm, Han-Shan, Li Po, poems from Chaucer, Spenser, Donne, Shakespeare, Whitman, Dickinson, Crane, the Berkeley Renaissance poets Duncan, Blaser, and Spicer, several of the New York School poets, the Beat Poets, the Oulipo, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poetry, as well as contemporary poetry from “right now” and “tomorrow”. Critical Readings that will frame this course include: Karl Marx, Roland Barthes, Geroges Bataille, and Michael Taussig.

Requirements: Daily attendance, one presentation, three papers (of two, three, and five pages, respectively) and various in-class assignments.

Text: photocopied course packet, anthologies, and hypertexts