Mad for ModPo: How the Top-Rated MOOC Makes Poetry Irresistible

ModPo Creator Al Filreis interviewed by Ann Cefola
 

In a video, Professor Al Filreis asks Erica Kaufman a question. The teaching assistant, one of nine around a table, smiles thoughtfully. More than 30,000 viewers worldwide await her reply. They come from every walk of life, representing four or more generations and 179 countries. After she responds, many will post a comment in a forum, start a new thread of discussion, or e-mail Kaufman during her weekly office hours.

These global students are part of a cult phenomenon known as ModPo, or Modern & Contemporary American Poetry, a ten-week online course now in its eleventh year. While this massive open online course (MOOC) is free, it’s a demanding Ivy League course requiring weekly webcasts and videos be viewed, multiple essays written and critiqued, and individual responses posted online.

ModPo is the invention of Filreis, Kelly Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, publisher of the highly regarded Jacket2, host of the podcast PoemTalk, and faculty director of Kelly Writers House where ModPo webcasts originate. Recently he edited, with Anna Strong Safford, The Difference is Spreading: Fifty Contemporary Poets on Fifty Poems (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). He is the author of 1960 (Columbia University Press, 2021), Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60 (North Carolina, 2008), Wallace Stevens and the Actual World (Princeton University Press, 1991) and Secretaries of the Moon: The Letters of Wallace Stevens and Jose Rodriguez Feo, with Beverly Coyle (Duke University Press, 1986).

We caught up with Filreis to get his insights into the mechanics of ModPo, the impact of MOOCs on traditional education, and his views on poetry today.

Before ModPo

How did you come to poetry yourself? Was there an “aha” poet that drew you in?

In college, I got into William Carlos Williams. I shared his poetry with my dad—a blue-collar guy—and he loved the fact that Williams was from New Jersey. Excited about Williams’ work, my dad drove straight into New York, to New Directions Press, and went upstairs to the office of its founder, James Laughlin—who was there at the time—and bought every one of Williams’ books from him. I still treasure those books.

You are fascinated by the connection between politics and poetry. What is the appeal?

I wanted to answer the question, “Does poetry do anything?”  Is it ancillary to the way life works, or might it teach us something or affect political ideas?  Can modern poetry, which is unclear and not straightforward, have a social and political dimension?  So I took one of the most political decades, the 1930s, to explore these questions. [See Filreis’ Modernism from Right to Life:  Wallace Stevens, the Thirties & Literary Radicalism (Cambridge University Press, July 1994).]

What courses are you teaching when you’re not leading ModPo?

I teach English 88, which is essentially ModPo; another course, Representations of the Holocaust; and in the spring, Writers House Fellows Seminar, which brings three eminent writers to the class where we study their work.

As one of the busiest people on the planet, can you share any secrets to help time-starved poets and writers?

Don’t sleep. Hit the ground running: I never get out of bed until I am really excited about a project. Then I literally go from bed to desk.

You work out every day too, right?

Of course! Working out gives you endorphins.

American poetry

You begin the course with the opposites of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and then trace their influence through succeeding generations of poets. What makes them each essentially American? 

They were both alternatives to mainstream culture at the time, and in different ways. Whitman was hysterically embracing the making of poems—going wide, being extensive, and external. Unlike Dickinson, he was a happy participant in culture.

Dickinson was in rebellion against mainstream culture. Intensive and internally focused, she operated on the assumption that probing the mind of one discovers the many and the general. Both Dickinson and Whitman stand against convention.

What prior generation or type of poetry is most influential on today’s poetry?

The New York School, Black Mountain School, Beats, and language poets. Contemporary poets often cite Emily Dickinson, Lorine Niedecker, and Walter Benjamin as influences. Conceptual poets are interested in different art forms; they look back to the visual art of Marcel Duchamp and music of John Cage.

Which era of American poetry is your favorite?

I like the early-modernist teens, when William Carlos Williams left behind Keatsian ode to write books like Kora in Hell, and Marianne Moore was discovering collage; also, the 1950s/60s, and New York Dada. I like transitional periods because you can see artists in the midst of adaptation and alteration. The best work comes at such moments.

Who is the most neglected American poet that you admire?

James Schuyler (1923-1991), a poet of the New York School. A great writer who was reticent about his writing but deserves to read by everyone.

You have written extensively about Wallace Stevens. What attracts you to his work?

Initially, the contrast of his bio—a square insurance executive buttoned up in the suburbs—and his being a poet of wild imagination, who could write “drunk sailor […] catches tigers in red weather.”

What is the state of American poetry today?

Incredibly vital and vibrant; so much is going on that’s pushing hard against the definition of poetry. For example, I admire Sofia Le Fraga’s video poem, “W8ing,” which is based on Waiting for Godot, and simulates a text message. It’s provocative.

Many poets gulp when you say that, in the future, the way poetry is conveyed is going to be more important than its content. Can you elaborate?

Poetry is changing, and you have to ask yourself how many art forms continue to reinvent themselves. We saw a president enter the White House in 2008 whose whole platform was change, and change has proven nearly impossible. Change is hard.

If the current state of the novel means a five-year TV series, then maybe the video poem is the inheritor of written poetry. We have to ask, “Is this poetry?  Does it count?”  It’s exciting, daring, capacious. Unlike any other art, poetry is being redefined. Personal subject lyric is still out there—but people are redoing it.

ModPo faculty

Tell us about Julia Bloch, director of the Penn Creative Writing Program, who co-taught ModPo with you and helped establish it early on.

Julia Bloch is a poet, author of the Sidebrow Books The Sacramento of Desire (2020), Valley Fever (2015); Allison Corporation (2015), and Letters to Kelly Clarkson (2012); and co-editor of Jacket2.

Each teaching assistant (TA) seems brilliant and original. How do you select them?

We have eight to twelve teaching assistants who are undergraduates, recent graduates, and people who are part of the Writers House community, who know me, or the course. We also have community TAs—people who were involved in the course and have offered to help—who work in the discussion forums, helping people, and offering peer reviews.

You have this skill, during webcasts, of engaging the TAs in a respectful and seamless way. What instructions, if any, do you give your TAs prior to the webcast?

None. That’s what makes the videos so appealing.

When and how do you tape all the videos?

We worked with a woman with a huge camera filming about three to four feet away. It’s actually very intimidating. We tape them in May and June, and sometimes do audio-only segments by phone.

Technology and teaching

What has technology afforded you that a regular classroom cannot provide?

One motivation is to share the poetry that was created outside the university, nonacademic materials, that are now holed up inside the academy. I’m a professor at an Ivy League college; I’m supposed to teach people who come through the admissions process properly. Yet I’ve found a way to curate the materials that make them easier to teach and more accessible to others.

What is crowd-sourcing, which is a foundation of the ModPo experience?

Crowd-sourcing is getting a lot of people to work together on a problem. You get a tiny bit of material, an object of study you can hold in your hand, to provoke people. For instance, instead of looking at the entire Constitution, you focus on the Second Amendment. You say, “Let’s get a lot of eyeballs on it and encourage people to respond.” A kind of super-collective close reading. Then, you stress that people have an obligation to respond. Humans love to opine—it’s our natural state.

How do you think MOOCS will evolve and impact traditional education?

First let me say that I don’t think MOOCs will have an impact on good small liberal arts colleges. These colleges might focus on small classes, something that MOOCs obviously cannot do. That’s their strength and cannot be reproduced. It’s a niche and will remain a viable alternative to a MOOC.

Mid- to large research universities, with “sage on the stage” lectures in vast amphitheaters, may be vulnerable and should seek to rethink pedagogy. Why pay for instruction when such lectures are available online? It’s useless to attend a lecture that is otherwise available elsewhere, or could be, when you can have a more fulfilling and self-directed experience online.

What does Penn gain from supporting a tuition-free MOOC?

Penn didn’t want to be left behind, so it decided to be among the first. Penn is Ben Franklin’s university—the MOOC is like a kite in the storm. The decision to do poetry was a radical one, and the University has supported our humanistic pedagogy.

Feedback for poets

Many people are critical of the large number of MFA writing programs churning out thousands of poets and writers. What are your feelings about MFAs? 

Most programs out there are pretty good. The premise is good, to give young writers an opportunity to do nothing but write, and to see if they can do it. Some really fabulous programs integrate literary theory with making art.

However, I don’t like some institutional situations. Too many MFA programs have become cash cows, and schools come to depend upon tuition from them. Also, an MFA is a terminal degree but it will not get you a job.

English Departments, overall, are more interested in the study of art than in the making of art. So the MFA programs get created by writers for writers, creating this sense of difference, or minority or separate status. It’s a cultural divide where writers stick with writers, and may feel marginalized within the college community.

How would you reimagine an advanced poetry track?

I like what we’ve done at Penn. We decided not to offer an MFA. Instead, we have a vibrant community which includes poetry teachers—and we have quite a group, including poets Herman Beavers, Laynie Browne, Kenneth Goldsmith, Simone White, and others—and resources such as PennSound, Jacket2, ModPo, Kelly Writers House, and related graduate and undergraduate programs.

Some poets feel that time spent on social media takes away from writing. Do you feel poets ought to jump in and use social media to advance recognition of their work?

The poets I admire are all over social media and doing very interesting things.

For practicing poets, it seems like there are only two paths in life: an academic role, or one moonlighting in an entirely different line of work. Do you agree, or do you see new alternatives emerging?

It’s not as black and white as people say; there’s a lot of gradation. I see young poets working in fields somewhat related to poetry: in the visual arts, writing for journals, working for web startups. That said, there are people who do unrelated work: William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens come to mind; Ron Silliman was a computer scientist. This is only to name a few.

What guidance would you give a person who just discovered that he or she is a budding poet?

Find the time and space to write. Write a lot and share the work. Our models could be Emily Dickinson and Lorine Niedecker—they were not professional poets. Although it was a different time, Dickinson wrote in her father’s home, and Niedecker wrote while living far away from the poetry centers.

ModPo pedagogy

You quickly go through different periods of American poetry—what is the advantage of such quick and decisive exposure?

I also like slow and deep. Fast and broad implies there is more one could do at any point—so much that, ModPo offers participants additional resources in ModPoPLUS.

Does this fast layering increase the understanding of poetry?

What ModPo offers is context. Don Winslow, who teaches a poetry course for adult learners at a library in Delaware or Maryland, uses ModPo videos weekly. His class loved William Stafford’s “Traveling Through the Dark.” However, in ModPo, we had read Rae Armantrout’s response, “Traveling Through the Yard,” a poem that calls out Stafford’s absurd presumptions, and ModPoers were more skeptical. Winslow saw, without the contrasts that ModPo provides, readers may lack a fuller understanding of a poem.

Talk a little about ModPo’s online forums.

Coursera sets up this system of online forums and each poem has its own sub-forum. It’s a web-based forum of discussion. I also respond live to e-mails during my office hours, which becomes like live chat, and students can also connect with the TAs and me.

One technical first for ModPo in Coursera is that essays, once peer-reviewed, immediately appear in the forums. This makes both the essay and peer review, both anonymous, accessible to everyone. In the forum, the essay writer can choose to respond to comments.

We’ve created this interpretive community. After students see a webcast or video, they immediately go to the forums to post their thoughts, ideas and questions. Even though last year’s course is long over, comments continue to come in.

ModPo is entering its eleventh season. How do you fine-tune it year to year?

In a prior year, in response to high numbers of teachers who were incorporating ModPo into their curricula, we created an additional section for teachers – our Teachers’ Resource Center. And we added ModPoPLUS for ModPoers who want to delve more deeply into a particular poet or literary period.

You have characterized ModPo discussions as “international, intergenerational, beautifully aimless, ungraded.” 

There is something disarming about it. Human beings should be able to work together this way. There is a utopian strain that happens through poetry.

What is one word that characterizes the essence of ModPo?

ModPo is a massive open online course. I’d like to riff on “open.” Open means anyone can enroll. It’s free. Open also means unfinished or ambiguous. If you were to take calculus, you would know that Sir Isaac Newton has done the work already, and you would have to learn it. The material in ModPo itself is open and requires an open mind. We don’t know the answers, and you can come to your own conclusions.

What would you say to someone hesitant to sign up for ModPo?

I would say, simply: Try it. It’s free and open, so you have nothing to lose by trying. You’ll meet some extraordinarily people there and grapple with some astonishing poems.

Ready, Set, ModPo!

ModPo is available three times a year in fall, spring, and summer:  https://www.coursera.org/course/modernpoetry

About the Interviewer:

Ann Cefola is the author of When the Pilotless Plane Arrives (Trainwreck Press, 2021), Free Ferry (Upper Hand Press, 2017), and Face Painting in the Dark (Dos Madres Press, 2014); translator of The Hero (Chax Press, 2018), and Hence this cradle (Seismicity Editions, 2007).

Websites: annogram.blogspot.com, anncefola.com

About the Artist:

Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. A former ceramicist, she received her B.F.A. in painting (UW). She switched from 3D to 2D and has remained there ever since. She works primarily on paintings, prints and collages. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections. She has exhibited on both coasts, extensively in the Northwest, including shows at Seattle University, SPU, Shoreline Community College, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the PaciNic Science Center. She is a member of the Seattle Print Art Association and COCA (Center of Contemporary Art).