Documentary poetry refuses the limits of journalism and archive, and also of lyric poetry. Combining these approaches yields a nuanced, more immediate investigation. Muriel Rukeyser, whose long poem The Book of the Dead we will explore, believed documentary images constituted one kind of reality and poetry another—“'Poetry can extend the document.” We will also study works by poets such as Bhanu Kapil, Anne Carson, Layli Long Soldier, C.S. Giscombe, Don Mee Choi, and Mai Der Vang. Documentary film, photography and theory will help us understand ethics of the field, and point toward the use of archival material. All semester students will be writing and researching topics of their choice to complete a chapbook-length work of docupoetry.

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