What is the value of writing about love? From the romantic, the sacred, the erotic, the familial, and the platonic, we will read works that explore many different facets of love. We will examine how the love poem form has been used across time to make sense of self, violence, and death. We will study common forms of the love poem and pay particular attention to how contemporary poets from marginalized communities are complicating and commandeering these inherited forms.

As Jericho Brown reminds us, "When I say I love you, I mean for you to understand that I exist in relation to you." Through poetry, we will seek to make sense of our own constellations of relations. We will work to understand the relationships we've made at K and prepare for new relationships post-graduation. We will learn from the love poem how to cultivate a place for love in our lives and understand that as anti-fascist work. No prior poetry background is needed for this course. Poetry novices are welcomed and encouraged!

This course, after all, rests on the conviction that poetry belongs to all of us. In our class we will work hard to destabilize the myth that poetry is an inscrutable mystery. We will be writing our own poetry as part of this course. Through this work, we will improve our ability to make connections and reflect deeply on our experiences. Our poems will teach us how to make meaning from these experiences and craft narratives that communicate this meaning to others. We will think about how these skills in language and narrative can be applied in other arenas of our lives, including our future lives post-graduation.