Whole-World Poetics: Graduate Student Panel with Harris Feinsod

Whole-World Poetics

How is study of poetry and poetics in one time and place best understood in relation to the poetry and poetics of other distant times and places? This orientation toward comparative, relational, transhistorical, and world poetics has distinguished Stanford’s approach to poetics scholarship in the recent decades leading to the founding of the Center for Poetics. This workshop on “Whole World Poetics” will reflect on some key terms of this approach. With Édouard Glissant’s brief essay “The Cry of the World” as a common touchstone, participants are welcomed to give flash presentations (2 min) of how they think of comparison (across language, time, or place) in their own work on poetry.

Background reading: Édouard Glissant, “The Cry of the World,” in Treatise on the Whole-World (2020): pp. 7–19 Optional: Harris Feinsod, “World Poetry: Commonplaces of an Idea,” MLQ (2019) 80 (4): pp. 427–452

Harris Feinsod is Ralph S. and Becky G. O'Connor Associate Professor of English and Director of the Tidewater Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.