MFA Writing Colloquium: Jenny Xie: A RUPTURE IN TIME: On Fracture and Fragment

This craft talk will discuss how form and language can enlarge the territory of the articulable in the context of several poems from The Rupture Tense. How do we represent the staggering force of a vast and recently unearthed photographic archive? How does one capture the complex entanglements of inherited memory? What tools do we have in limning experience of interwoven temporalities that resist clear narrative shape? Grounding this discussion will be a reading of several poems from The Rupture Tense, and a longer reflection on how these poems found their shape, their animating energies, and the textual correspondences behind them.

Jenny Xie was born in Anhui, China. She is the author of Eye Level and The Rupture Tense, both of which were shortlisted for the National Book Award. Her honors include recognition from the Academy of American Poets, the Vilcek Foundation, New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation. She is assistant professor of Written Arts at Bard College and resides in New York City.

This event is colloquium credit eligible.