Chen Chen

Happy Poems! 

Saturday, August 26, 2023 11:30am-12:45pm PT

Chen Chen

Do they exist? If they do, can they be as good as the poems that wreck us? Can a happy poem wreck us? And how can we avoid sentimentality or is that a risk we just need to take? In this generative session, we’ll look at Ross Gay’s essay, “Joy Is Such a Human Madness” as a compass for our discussion and a starting point for writing about/from/through happiness, joy, and pleasure. Within the genre of happy poem, we’ll think about poems that celebrate love, sex, community, and connection of various kinds. We’ll examine some model poems by Ross Gay and by others, including Charif Shanahan, Czesław Miłosz, Jane Wong, and Yanyi. Come prepared to engage in jubilant experimentation.

Required Reading (in Reader):

Finney, Nikky. “Cattails.” Head Off & Split, Triquarterly Books/Northwestern, 2011.

Finney, Nikky. “Inquisitor and Insurgent: Black Woman with Pencil, Sharpened.” Meridians, vol. 

7, no. 1, 2006.

Gay, Ross. “Joy Is Such a Human Madness.” The Book of Delights, Algonquin Books, 2019.

Gay, Ross. “A Small Needful Fact.” The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, Split This 

Rock, 30 Apr. 2015.

Available online at:  https://www.splitthisrock.org/poetry-database/poem/a-small-needful-fact

Gay, Ross. “Throwing Children.” Poem-a-Day, the Academy of American Poets, 26. Apr. 2023.

Available online at: https://poets.org/poem/throwing-children

Ruefle, Mary. Excerpts from “Lectures I Will Never Give.” Madness, Rack, and Honey, Wave 

Books, 2012.

Miłosz, Czesław. “Gift.” New & Collected Poems: 1931-2001, Penguin, 2001.

Shanahan, Charif. “Thirty-Fifth Year.” Trace Evidence, Tin House, 2023.

Wong, Jane. “After Preparing the Altar, the Ghosts Feast Feverishly.” How to Not Be Afraid of 

Everything, Alice James Books, 2021.

Yanyi. Excerpts from The Year of Blue Water, Yale University Press, 2019.