The Nothingness Shows Through

Instructor: Vanessa Place
Saturday October 30 2010 from 1-5PM (there will be a break).

Radically evil poetics is a poetics that is a-poetics, poetry which is simply that which is not not-poetry. This seminar will probe into the pit of such a malevolent poetics, examining what it means to have poetry in which nothing matters but the fact of poetry itself. No less, certainly no more. What are the pleasures of that which is not content. What is the act of reading that which is merely transparent. What is the tipping-point of poetry. Is poetry a humanism. Is it a polemic. Each participant will provide a response to one of the sample texts, to be brought to the seminar and duly diagnosed. Empty texts will be discussed, as will empty gestures. There will of course be no accounting for taste.

Required texts:

Place and Fitterman, Notes on Conceptualisms, Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009.
Place, “Radically Evil Poetics,” supplied to participants prior to the class.
Sample texts: to be supplied prior to the class.

Capacity: 12 Students
Fee: $190.00

A public reading by Vanessa Place will follow the workshop at 7:30pm
Where: 283 College Street, second floor
$5 at the door, free for workshop students