Abstracts

Lonnie Monka (Bio)

Bad Guest Poetics: Invitation, Improvisation, and the Ethics of Disruption

This paper explores the ethics and aesthetics of hospitality in David Antin’s “talk poems,” improvised performances he delivered only when invited by institutions. While appearing to accept the role of grateful guest, Antin often subverted expectations by performing unscripted monologues instead of prepared poems or lectures. His work thus reveals a tension between institutional dependence and aesthetic autonomy. Framing the invitation as both a creative constraint and a site of disruption, I argue that Antin’s practice exemplifies a “bad guest poetics”: an art form that emerges within systems of hospitality only to challenge the assumptions that underwrite them.