He finds heat in the echoes of other artists’ words, just as he does in the quotidian moments that propel his own compositions.īennett’s teaching, too, models what he calls “a practice of joyful citation.” He invokes the writers he loves so often in class discussion that they seem present in the room: Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, James Baldwin, W.E.B. In framing the course around a working theory of “social poetics” - a term borrowed from writer and labor activist Mark Nowak - Bennett is seeking, as he puts it in the syllabus, “a new way for us to be together in a cultural moment marked by distance … using the instruments left to us by luminaries both dead and living, a cloud of witnesses beckoning us toward a future with room enough for all of us to flourish.“ Bennett’s own poetry collections, “The Sobbing School,” “Owed,” and “The Study of Human Life,” are energized by references to such luminaries. “It’s not ‘What do you think?’ and far from the dreaded ‘What does it mean?’ It’s an invitation to share anything,” Caren says, “a presentation of a completely open slate.” Later, Caren explains why he appreciates the refrain. Throughout the semester, Bennett will ask “Where’s the heat?” again and again. “He’s allowing himself to live in the subjunctive.” Gay is often misread as a cheerful poet, Bennett adds, but “this is a guy who’s wrestling joy from the jaws of defeat.” “Yeah, yeah!” Bennett responds to Caren, getting excited. “It’s only the promise of something good.” “That’s what spring is, too,” Caren suggests. But the poem’s positive imagery - purple okra at the market, a basketball court down the block - evokes simple pleasures that, likewise, have yet to be realized. With symbols like the vulture, he suggests, the poet recognizes that death has passed him by, for now. Rising junior Matthew Caren, whose MIT studies focus on computer science and music, is among the students to volunteer his thoughts. He poses a now-familiar question to the class: “Where’s the heat in that poem? What’s strange? What’s familiar?” The discussion changes gears when Bennett asks a student to read aloud Ross Gay’s poem “Sorrow Is Not My Name.”Īfter arranging that good suit of feathersīennett makes an appreciative noise when the poem’s final words, “I am spring,” hang in the air. The ensuing dialogue touches on environmental justice, the democratization of open spaces, and a tradition of African American writers foregrounding the life stories of animals (a theme Bennett connects to the history of slavery in his first book of literary criticism, “Being Property Once Myself”). ![]() He begins class like he always does, with an ungraded writing prompt today, he offers eight minutes to write “a poem about the beginning of a world.” Then he breaks the comfortable hush to introduce a topic close to his heart: Black nature poetry. ![]() ![]() Once everyone’s assembled for class, Bennett switches off the music. The course explores questions like: What social function has poetry served for African Americans, then and now? How can readers from different backgrounds come together to learn from these writers about the Black experience and about themselves? poets - part of a group historically barred from literacy and many forms of ownership and belonging. It’s a relaxed, convivial start to a new MIT Literature class that explores the relationship between poetry and the social lives of everyday people.īennett, a visiting professor in spring 2023 who will join the MIT faculty as a full-time professor of literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities this summer, designed class 21L.004 (Reading Poetry: Social Poetics) with an emphasis on Black U.S. The wistful chords of the 1979 Bill Evans jazz album “We Will Meet Again” play in the background. On a Monday afternoon, poet Joshua Bennett is chatting with early arrivals to his class, asking how they spent their weekends.
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