The American Sonnet
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Sonnets from the American (2020 Symposium Site, Archived)

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Nearly 800 years since its invention, the sonnet is in a period of extraordinary production and development, taken up by poets from every corner of the aesthetic field. In American poetry, more than 25 collections have centralized the sonnet in the last three years alone, often in book-length sonnet sequences. Formal and formally subversive sonnets by established and emerging poets show the form continuing to function as a poetic bellwether, revealing how American poets seek to engage with forbears and tradition, from homage to interrogation, as they negotiate public and private questions of nation, race, class, gender, sexuality, and diaspora within the form’s peculiar confines.
​

 The Sonnets from the American symposium (October 1 - 3, 2020) emphasized connections across literary periods and movements within the American sonnet tradition while showcasing contemporary developments, as will the subsequent Sonnets from the American critical anthology under contract with University of Iowa Press. We seek to draw together the diverse critical voices, methodologies, and historical and theoretical perspectives that represent the burgeoning field of American sonnet studies to address a need at this point in the American sonnet’s history for an expansive and focused examination. 

The Sonnets from the American online archive is a work-in-progress intended to complement and expand 
upon the selection of poems featured in the forthcoming book Sonnets from the American: Essays and Poems (University of Iowa Press, 2022). We hope our curation serves as as an additional resource for teachers, students, and lovers of the American sonnet:
Selected Sonnets

Critical Anthology [call concluded]: 

​Sonnets from the American: An Anthology of Poems and Essays (under contract with the University of Iowa Press)
Co-edited by Dora Malech & Laura T. Smith
Call for papers
Symposium [event concluded]:

October 1-3, 2020
Co-organized by Dora Malech (Johns Hopkins University) & Laura T. Smith (Stevenson University)
​Co-sponsored by:
  • The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University
  • The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University
  • The Hopkins Review​​
Additional support from the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University and the English and Literature Program at Stevenson University.
This event was free and open to the public and all events were professionally live captioned for accessibility.
Symposium Schedule



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  • Home
  • Commentary and Conversation
  • Symposium Archive
    • Home
    • Selected Sonnets from the American
    • CFP
    • Symposium Schedule
    • Virtual Book Fair
    • Symposium Presenters
  • Contact
  • Supporters