ModPo is at once a love-fest and a learning-fest.
What two things are more necessary
In such a restless world as this is?To begin—
Enroll before November 23, 2015.
Then, open, scratch, and sniff around for a year, at your leisure,
until next September's sessions fire up again—
a rave new world of sensual pleasure awaits.
As a septuagenarian I am surely not your average ModPo participant, but then, I am not your average MOOCher, either. Given that, I have a few words to describe my experience for the last two years with the Coursera ModPo group that may be of some interest to those considering the value of the program, the efficacy of its pedagogical methodology, and the importance of its continuing to inject fresh faces, living or dead, into the “babble flow” from which our art, culture, and society can either spread like a paradisiacal, or like a hellish, pandemic.
Firstly, my ModPo experience has enabled me to expand my horizon as a seeker of truth and beauty. The course has sharpened my reading skills, honed my analytical skills, and enhanced my appreciation for original forms of thought and expression.
Secondly, the discussions of a seemingly infinite variety of personal observations and interpretations of each syllable, word, line, pause, stop and stanza, whether in the open discussion forums, the web panel discussions, or the weekly webcasts stimulates new flows of thought while building and displaying new patterns of language in such an active and dynamic way that it cannot help but reinforce the entire structure. Form and content are merged into a viable, cogent, living, breathing, growing body of work—as if the artists and audience were standing side by side in collaboration creating a forever new, forever curious, forever dazzling display.
Thirdly, Dear Reader (I warned you that I was one of the Old Ones), ModPo invites your presence so as "to detain you", as the poet, Cid Corman, does, and you will learn to do as well.
