EN354 What Are Poets For?
NOT RUNNING 2019–2020
Module description
This module explores the relationship between poetry and philosophy, and is named after Martin Heidegger's 1946 'What are Poets For' essay, in which he calls on poetry to reignite interest in ideas he believes have been overshadowed by the modern world: being and existence; care; spirit; the gods; and nature. These ideas structure the module as we explore essays on poetry by Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Alan Badiou, Giorgio Agamben and others in relation to poems by Friedrich Hölderlin, George Trakl, Rainer Maria Rilker, Arthur Rimbaud, William Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Bishop, J. H. Prynne, Alice Oswald and Jorie Graham.