Flowerless Gardeners: Barbaric Poetry after Auschwitz
11:00 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008
Cornell Auditorium in Plaster Hall
Admission: free

“To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” counts among the most provocative statements of the 20th century. It aroused a firestorm of rebuttal and has remained a catalytic force in the study of 20th century literature. Why? And why poetry, of all genres? What prompted Adorno to single out poetry after Auschwitz, when Auschwitz destroyed so much else? And what did happen to poetry after Auschwitz? We will look at poetry before and after Auschwitz and see exactly what all the fuss is about, and why exactly poetry is vital in preserving individual freedom.

Jennifer Hoyer is an assistant professor of German at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. She has a Ph.D. in German literature from the University of Minnesota. She has presented and published on German Jewish poet Nelly Sachs and second language acquisition. Dr. Hoyer is the recipient of a Fulbright research fellowship, Hadassah International Research grant, numerous travel grants, and many pedagogy and technology grants. Research interests include Jewish studies, poetry, German and American pop culture of the 1980s, and film. She is currently working on a project that examines 20th-century poetic interpretations of ancient and classical poetic genres, in particular epigraphy, and a study of the Jewish press in Germany during the 1930s.