An excerpt from J’Lyn Chapman’s introduction to The Form Our Curiosity Takes which collects discussions in her Naropa classroom between students and Jenny Boully, Renee Gladman and Cole Swenson.
Numbers are important quantitative representations of what Spahr and Young call ‘feminist interventions,’ but I want to emphasize that what occurred in our class was not so much the representation of women’s innovative writing as it was the performance of it. Like any meaningful, reciprocal conversation, this interchange with some of the most exciting thoughts of this moment both supports and, more importantly, engenders innovation—it innervates it. That is to say that when we talk about innovative writing, we’re not only talking about experiments with language, although experimentation is certainly part of innovation; we’re also and more urgently talking about formal innovation as ‘the cultivation of a philosophy of experience’…