“Lower limit speech / Upper limit music,” wrote poet Louis Zukofsky. This lecture explores poetry and other writing that reaches toward that upper limit. How can we make engaging music with nothing but words on a page? What happens when fiction and nonfiction “break into song” at key moments? We’ll consider the possibilities for song and rhythm in poetry and other genres, with prompts for your writing and toe-tapping inspired by Theodore Roethke, Gwendolyn Brooks, and more.

Zach Savich is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, including a memoir, Diving Makes the Water Deep, and the poetry collection Momently (Black Ocean, 2024). His work has received the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Colorado Prize for Poetry, the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s Open Award, and other honors. Savich teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.