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=Popular Poetry: YouTube, Hip Hop, Bob Dylan, and the Beats=

Course Description

 * The word ‘poetry’ often intimidates students, yet poetry has always excited us, in magazines, at protest marches, in music, on city buses, and more recently on YouTube and in personal blogs. What has been the role of poetry in relation to popular culture throughout the 20th century? This seminar examines 'popular' poetry, the kind not often taught in universities, by looking at the history of populist poetry and the countercultural poetries of the Beat Generation, the Black Arts Movement, street poets, Poetry Slams, and poetry on the Internet.
 * We will ask how different forms of poetry have helped shape public identity at various moments in history. Students will attend poetry readings in Denver and produce their own poems to be displayed as broadsides on campus, like the one featured to the left by the poet Gwendolyn Brooks.
 * We will ask how different forms of poetry have helped shape public identity at various moments in history. Students will attend poetry readings in Denver and produce their own poems to be displayed as broadsides on campus, like the one featured to the left by the poet Gwendolyn Brooks.