Poetics: Black Aesthetics: Visuality & Visibility in Contemporary Black Poetry

This course considers how contemporary Black poets have explored & expanded the concept of Black aesthetics the Black Arts Movement first theorized. We focus on texts that reward an interest in how visibility (concerning what can be seen) & visuality (concerning how we process the world in visual terms) operate to produce & make meaning of Blackness. How do oral & aural culture manifest themselves in these works? What is the status of the (visually troubling) Black body in the line of text? What does Black abstraction make visible? We read Black poetry, criticism, cultural studies, & theory to move from these questions to new ones.