This talk will try to address concerns about how subtext works in our poems. Often poets will talk about the striking images and the arresting figurative language within poems, but we're not always as keen at understanding why that language or image is in the poem. When asked about subtext, it emerges as one of the most nebulous literary devices that we have at our service. How should one use it? We'll examine strategies both to identify subtext in and to build subtext within our poems. And, more importantly, we'll talk about why we so desire it.
A. Van Jordan is the author of four collections: Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, (2005), which was listed as one the Best Books of 2005 by The London Times; Quantum Lyrics, (2007); and The Cineaste, (2013), W.W. Norton & Co. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award (2004), an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (2005), and a Pushcart Prize (2007). He is also the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), a United States Artists Fellowship (2009), and the Lannan Literary Award in Poetry (2015).