Weeks 1-2: Fred Wah's "is a door" (2009)

In a way, it's a total no-brainer to choose Fred Wah as a poetic representative of Canada, considering that he served as the Canadian Parlimentary Poet Laureate from 2009–2011 — certainly, state-appointed honors deserve special consideration, no? More importantly, Wah represents Canada's unique status as both an independent entity and a former British colony, as well as a cultural crossroads through his diverse ethnicity (his father, raised in China, is part Chinese and part Scots-Irish; his mother was born in Sweden and emigrated as a child). Likewise, Wah's literary career has embraced a similar diversity, yielding award-winning work in both poetry and fiction, as well as literary scholarship.

is a door (2009) is Wah's latest collection, coming almost half a century after his literary debut, and its origins are geographically and temporally diverse. The first section, "Isadora Blue," has its origins in Wah's experience of Hurricane Isadore while visiting Mexico in 2002, while section two, "Ethnogy Journal" was composed during a 1999 journey through Laos and Thailand. Wah's perspective as visitor and native, both at home and abroad, carries over into the book's other sections, where he explores notions of place and personhood including otherness, diaspora and "the other side of the tracks."  One question we'll seek answers to throughout the term is how a poet from a given country does and doesn't represent, whether overtly or subtly, the character and ideology of her homeland — and this is why, in part, we'll end our class by looking at two US poets. In Fred Wah, we have an excellent opportunity to explore these ideas from various angles.

Here's our reading schedule for is a door:

• Thurs. August 28: "Isadora Blue"
• Tues. September 2: "Ethnogy Journal" and "Discount Me In"
• Thurs. September 4: "Hinges" 

And here are several additional resources (pay special attention to the first):

• Wah's PennSound author page — home to several readings and talks, most importantly (for our purposes) a 2010 Close Listening program hosted by Charles Bernstein (the last author we'll read this semester), during which he reads approximately 3/4 of is a door.
• PoemTalk #44, "On the other side of the tracks" — a discussion of "Race, to go" from the "Discount Me In" section of is a door, featuring a panel that includes Lisa Robertson. 
• the Fred Wah Digital Archives — organized by ArtMob
• Wah's Parliamentary Poet Laureate homepage
• a 2012 profile of Wah from The Globe and Mail
• is a door reviewed in The Globe and Mail

Examples for Poetry Analysis Exercise

We'll spend a little time on our first day of class discussing several strategies for analyzing poetry, which you can consult throughout the term here. I've chosen a few diverse poems from around the world — the US, Poland, Australia, and England, respectively — to serve as fodder for our discussion(s):

• Eileen Myles, "Movie" (audio here)
• Adam Zagajewski, "Don't Allow the Lucid Moment to Dissolve"
• Kate Fagan, "Luminous"
• Tom Raworth, "You've Ruined My Evening/You've Ruined My Life"

Course Description

In this class, we’ll take a globetrotting tour of the field of contemporary poetry and poetics, surveying recent English-language work by poets from a wide variety of countries — Canada, Mexico, Australia, Germany, England, and Armenia, among others — along with the United States. Aside from exploring the distinct national perspectives embodied in each poet’s work, we’ll also consider the way in which current events and the boundary-erasing nature of our hyper-connected world serve as unifying forces.