F154.
The Against Tradition Tradition: Contradiction & the Prose Poem
Friday, February 9, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am
Originating in nineteenth-century France as a subversive form “supple . . . and rugged enough to adapt . . . to the lyrical impulses of the soul,” prose poems are now taught in writing classrooms across the globe. Has their popularity changed their capacity for surprise, radicalism, and (non)sense? How are contemporary poets troubling the contradictions inherent in the form’s name? This diverse panel of poets will consider these questions and trace their relationships to the indefinable prose poem.
Participants
Leslie Sainz is the author of Have You Been Long Enough at Table (Tin House, 2023). The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, and The Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University, she is the managing editor of the New England Review.
Dana Levin's fifth book is Now Do You Know Where You Are, a 2022 NYT Notable Book. She is coeditor of a book on poet Bert Meyers for the Unsung Masters Series (Pleiades 2023). A Whiting and Guggenheim Fellow, Levin serves as Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Maryville University in Saint Louis.
Sophie Klahr is the author of Two Open Doors In a Field (Backwaters Press, 2023) and Meet Me Here At Dawn (YesYes Books), and coauthor of There is Only One Ghost in the World (Fiction Collective 2, 2023) with Corey Zeller. She lives in Los Angeles.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is an NEA fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (TRP, 2020). His work appears in American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has facilitated workshops for The Writer's Center, Beyond Baroque, Litro magazine, and elsewhere.
Olatunde Osinaike is a Nigerian-American poet, essayist, and software developer originally from the West Side of Chicago. He is the author of Tender Headed (Akashic Books, 2023), winner of the National Poetry Series. His work has received support from Hurston/Wright Foundation and Poets & Writers.
