Friday, July 31, 2009

The Printer's Ball

A great article today in the Chicago Sun-Times about the fifth annual Printer's Ball. It starts like this . . .

Robert Frost was never this hot. Guns. Empowerment. Mass media. Those were some of the popular themes at the Brave New Voices summit here, where more than 900 teenage poets and spoken-word artists from across the world gathered to bring poetry into a new convergence of hip-hop, choreography and guttural rhymes.

Words have always helped to make sense of a turbulent world. In this regard, hip-hop and slam poetry is an extension of the 1950s Beats' link between jazz and poetry. "The Beats taught everyone poetry doesn't have to be homework," said Tony Trigilio, 43, director of creative writing and poetry in the English department of Columbia College, which offers the nation's only undergraduate poetry major. "They used the elaborate rhythms of jazz. They brought poetry back to its roots in music."

Read the rest of the article here. And did YOU know that Columbia College offers the nation's only undergraduate poetry major? I dig it.


2 comments:

jesuscrisis said...

Cool!

Shelley Chernin said...

Yes, cool indeed.

Do you know if Columbia College's boast that they offer the nation's only undergraduate program major is anything more than semantics? Lots of schools offer undergraduate majors in creative writing with an emphasis on poetry. Is there a substantive difference between Columbia College's poetry major and a creative writing major with an emphasis on poetry? Does Columbia College give a BA or a BFA?

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau