Intensive: Philosophy and Poetry; Poetry and Philosophy with Cynthia Cruz
As the poet-philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin wrote, There is a hospital where every unhappy poet like me can take refuge with honor—philosophy. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben responds: In our day the hospital of philosophy has closed its shutters, pointing to a fissure between the two fields. Their relationship is a long
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one, beginning with Plato s expulsion of the poets. Some philosophers—Hegel and Marx among them—wrote poems before abandoning the practice for philosophy alone; others, like Ingeborg Bachmann and Hölderlin himself, trained as philosophers before becoming poets. In this weekend intensive, we ll read poet-philosophers and philosopher-poets alongside philosophical writing on poetry, guided by two questions: What is a poem, and what does a poem do? and What is philosophy, and what does philosophy do? From there, we ll ask how poetry and philosophy relate—or fail to—how reading one illuminates the other, and where the border between them lies. Finally, we ll consider what makes a poem philosophical: not the mere noting of thoughts as they arise, but a poetry that undertakes the rigorous labor of thinking and registers that labor, and its dialectic, within the work itself. Poets and philosophers discussed may include Ingeborg Bachmann, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, Walter Benjamin, Alain Badiou, Martin Heidegger, and Giorgio Agamben. Remote 2-Day Intensive | Saturday Sunday | December 5 6 | 12-4pm ET This remote class will take place on Zoom. The Zoom link will be emailed to you by a staff member in the week leading up to the class start date. All are welcome, space is limited. A limited number of need-based scholarships are available. Please email support@poetshouse.org with any questions. By attending or participating in this program, you agree to abide by our Community Agreement. About the Educator: Cynthia Cruz is the author of ten collections of poems, two essay collections, and a novella. Cruz earned a BA in English Literature at Mills College, an MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts, an MA in German Language and Literature at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a PhD from the European Graduate School where she wrote her dissertation on Hegel and madness. She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, as well as a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her recent collection of poems, Hotel Oblivion, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Notre Dame.