Bread Loaf Lecture Series: “Slightly Odd or Profoundly Bizarre: Notes on Defamiliarization” with Matthew Oltzmann

This lecture will explore the idea that poetry should “make the strange familiar, and the familiar strange.” How does something recognizable or mundane suddenly find itself charged with mystery? How does something wild and surreal feel immediately connected to our daily lives? At a glance, it might seem like I’m describing two very different types of poems: one invested in our ordinary world, the other reaching for the absurd. The real and the unreal. However, in each of these modes, the effect I’m describing is actually achieved through similar means. Regardless of subject matter, these poems rely on the poet shifting the context through which we view the poem’s emotional or conceptual core. Let’s talk about how that happens.