There's a good NYT editorial about the JFK-Obama comparison that would be interesting to discuss with students because it specifically tries to address (among other things) the role of poetry in politics. In other words, it touches on the ways candidates must divine and speak to people's unspoken, not-yet-spoken, affective, spiritual wants and wishes.

The article states:

This weekend, I saw the movie I'm Not There. Afterward--actually also during--my sister complained, "This movie is too long! It's hard to follow! And why is Richard Gere even in it? I don't get that part. They should have made a normal biopic and had Cate Blanchett play Bob Dylan the whole time."

write poems!!

So, on a whim (sort of), I set up a forum for original poems. That is, poems written by students in my E314 Reading Poetry class. I sensed I had a number of writers, but was a little hesitant to ask them to actually lay it out.

I've been making constant use of PennSound this semester and wanted to remind everyone of its existence.

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/