The Hybrid Lyric: A Poetry Masterclass with David Baker (Zoom)

This two-hour masterclass will focus on hybridity and the lyric poem.  Is there a “pure” lyric?  What is an “impure” lyric?  And how does the hybrid lyric evolve far beyond those categories?  Poetry is a powerfully elastic form, in fact, limited more by our imaginations than its capacity for inclusion.  In this class we’ll range far and wide, discussing discordant idioms, multivocal and multi-narrative forms, as well as how to embed material from the widest array of other genres—math and music, geology and genealogy, found documents, weather reports, family artifacts, letters and newspapers, and more.  We’ll talk about how to read a hybrid poem, how to assemble the pieces we want to include, how to write our own new work.  

I’ll provide a handout with lots of poems, examples from other genres, and my own experiments with the hybrid.  We’ll hone our abilities to read with inclusivity and to write with a widening reach, looking to…