Sensitivity. Impulsivity. An over-active imagination. Unbridled emotions. Deep thoughts. Musical talents. A rhyming dictionary. Midnight visits from the Muse. Do these things make you a poet? Perhaps they help, if thoughtfully, moderately used; yet, for this introductory poetry writing class, we will be concerned more with a poetic attribute that precedes these—attentiveness. “Poetry,” writes Donald Revell in the book that lends its title to this course, “is a form of attention” (The Art of Attention: A Poet’s Eye, Graywolf Press 2007). The best poems, the best poets, it seems, have mastered the art of attending to the world as acutely as they attend to the possibilities of language and the page.
In this introductory course, we will focus first on the essential building blocks of a poem (i.e., line, prosody, image, syntax, voice, sound), followed by a study of different closed and open lyric forms. Students will compose poems based on in-class exercises and assignments, will submit poems for workshop and critique, and will be expected to revise their work significantly. Attentive reading will accompany our writing: we will read and analyze published poems as well as the drafts of peers.
By the end of the semester, you will leave with a portfolio of your poetry, a deeper understanding of craft and the process of writing, and a sharpened sense of your abilities as a poet and a reader/critic of poetry.
Required Texts:
Seagull Reader: Poems, 2nd edition. Ed. Joseph Kelly. (New York: WW Norton & Co., 2007).
The Teachers and Writers Handbook of Poetic Forms, 2nd edition. Ed. Ron Padgett. (New York: T&W Books, 2000).
Course Packet
Composition Marble notebook (dedicated to this course only).