Dan Tobin – Forms After Forms: Metamorphosis and Improvisation in the Bop and Duplex (January 2024)

The English language has adopted and adapted poetic forms from other languages throughout its historical evolution. Likewise, its poets have tuned their powers of innovation to new and vibrant expressive means. Tobin’s lecture explores how two new forms, the bop and the duplex, born of African American experience, richly improvise (often with frisson) upon already well-established forms.