LLSW2902

The urban walk-poem or story is a species of travel literature, one in which, without going anywhere, one adopts a stance of unfamiliarity in her own town. Like a poem or a piece of music, the walk provides the reader/writer with a sequence of experiences, one that is not organized like a traditional narrative. In this writing class students discover the literary ramble as a genre with its own formal qualities and expressive possibilities. The class will consider Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, a history of walking, and move to peripatetic poets such as Walt Whitman and Frank O’Hara. Americans from Thomas Jefferson to Edith Wharton walked in Paris, and Rousseau and De Quincey walked in 19th century London. Contemporary provocateurs Will Self and Iain Sinclair followed in their footsteps. The course mixes walking, reading, composition, revision, and walking again. Along the way, we will reinvent a classic and contemporary – yet overlooked – literary style.