Matthew Olzmann: Direct Address and the Illusion of Audience (July 2019)

This lecture looks at epistles, apostrophes, and other moments in poems or stories where a speaker or narrator pretends to be talking to someone other than the reader. Drawing from works by Yusef Komunyakaa, Aimee Nezhukamatathil, Patrick Rosal, Alice Walker, and others, it considers how we shape—to varying degrees—an identity for the addressee, and how and where is the reader positioned in this type of excepted “conversation.”