English 408: Advanced Poetry Writing
English 406 Section 32688: Intermediate Poetry Writing
Spring 2010
Wednesdays: 2 - 4:20 p.m.
VKC 259
Instructor: Cecilia Woloch
E-mail:
Office: THH-442
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 2 to 4:15 p.m.
Description: This course will be run as an intensive workshop for students with a serious interest in practicing the craft of poetry and deepening their understanding of the poet’s process. We'll read and discuss selections from The Norton Anthology of Modern & Contemporary Poetry, as well as recent poems by diverse contemporary poets, with an eye toward exploring the ways poets have influenced and inspired one another, but primarily as a way for students to discover new sources and techniques for their own creative work. Students will generate poetry using the reading assignments as springboards, will offer constructive criticism of one another's work in class, and will use feedback from the class in revision of their poems. A final portfolio comprised of poems written and revised over the course of the semester and a short paper on the work of one of the assigned poets will be required in lieu of a final exam.
Texts:
The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Vols. I & II
Wind in a Box, by Terrance Hayes
Jan. 13: Introductions; reading and discussion of syllabus; guidelines for critique; read aloud from "Song of Myself" and "Howl"
Reading Assignment: Poet as Witness, Outlaw, Seer
From the Norton: Walt Whitman (biography, "Song of Myself," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"); Hart Crane (biography and "The Bridge"); Allen Ginsberg (biography, "Howl," "A Supermarket in California," "America"); Joy Harjo (biography, "The Path to the Milky Way Leads through L.A.")
Also handouts: Meg Kearney; Adrienne Rich (from Atlas of the Difficult World); Navajo Chants; Terrance Hayes (from Wind in a Box); Saadi Youseff; Frank O'Hara and Mayakovsky
Writing Assignment: Poem as Chant, Rant, Incantation, Prayer
Write a poem "in the manner" of any of the above poets. You may steal an anaphora, if you like -- i.e., "I Come From," "I Believe," "America," etc ... Think big; think mythopoetic; think of your own life in the context of your times and your place in history. Bring copies to next class.
Jan. 20:Discuss and read aloud from assigned reading
Workshop class poems
Assignment: Revision of this week’s poem; bring copies to next class.
Jan. 27: Workshop revisions
Reading Assignment: A Formal Feeling Comes
From the Norton: biographies and poems by Emily Dickinson, H.D., Sylvia Plath and Louise Gluck. Also handouts: Saphho, Akhmatova, Szymborska
Writing Assignment: Compression, Intensity, Craft
Use one noun/concrete image --in the manner of "Tulips," "Mock Orange," "a certain slant of light" -- and describe it and make it speak for your own inner life. OR: Use one abstract noun -- the soul, pain, my life, truth -- and, in the manner of Dickinson, render it in concrete images.
Bring copies to next class.
Feb. 3:Discuss and read aloud from assigned reading
Workshop class poems
Assignment: Revision of this week’s poem; bring copies to next class.
Feb. 10:Workshop revisions
Reading assignment: Sound & Sense; Music & Meaning
From the Norton, read sections on Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Lynn Hejinian; also e.e. cummings, John Berryman, Frank O'Hara and Kenneth Koch.
Writing assignment: Speaking with the Teeth; Writing with the Tongue
Write a poem in which the play of sounds -- word combinations, rhythm, repetition -- takes precedence over the making of "sense;" or in which the "sense" is created, at least in part, by the sound. This should be a poem that chimes strangely, that fills the mouth, that's a workout to read aloud. Use alliteration, repetition, internal rhyme, arrangement of accents/stresses and any other sonic devices at your disposal to fill your poem with sound.
Feb. 17:Discuss and read aloud from assigned reading
Workshop class poems
Assignment: Revision of this week’s poem; bring copies to class.
Feb. 24:Workshop revisions
Reading Assignment: Influence, Theft, Homage
Read Wind in a Box by Terrance Hayes; from the Norton, read section on Langston Hughes and handout, “Daybreak in Alabama.”
Writing Assignment: Imaginary Poems for the … Future
Write a poem that’s a list, in the manner of Hayes’ “Imaginary Poems for the Old-Fashioned Future,” of the poems you want/need to write, some of which should be impossible. Use numbers, one through thirteen. Read the notes at the back of Wind in a Box and notice how many influences Hayes acknowledges; how, in his poems, he riffs off of/pays homage to everything from jazz music to children’s books, Spanish literature to American pop culture, Black history and cinema, etc … As you write your own poem, think of the influences that might come to bear on your work, lines and images you might “steal,” ideas and lyrics and etc … and incorporate those things into your list poem. Think about the things YOU will have to address in poetry because no other poet has or will. Also remember: “Amateurs plagiarize; artists steal” – and think about the difference between art and plagiarism; also, “All art is collaborative” – and think about who your collaborators might be.
Mar. 3:Discuss Wind in a Box
Workshop class poems
Assignment: Revision of this week’s poem; bring copies to next class.
Mar. 10:Guest Poet (TBA)
Workshop revisions
Assignment for March 24: Write a 4-5 page essay on the poet whose work has had the biggest impact on your poetry and/or sensibilities this semester. (Choose one of the poets we’ve read/discussed.) Which poems have influenced you, and why, and how – cite examples from the poet’s work and your own. What techniques have you learned from this poet’s work, and where and how have you applied them? What do you find “inspiring” about this poet’s work? What doors does it throw open in your psyche? Does it make you see your own life differently? Where does this poet’s life and work intersect with your own? Cite biographical facts about the poet’s life as they pertain to the poet’s work and think about this in relation to the intersection of your own life and creative work. Your essay should be both critical and creative; both personal and literary. Adrienne Rich’s essay about Emily Dickinson, though much longer and more exhaustive than yours needs to be, may serve as a model. Bring copies of your essay to class on Mar. 24.
Mar. 17:Spring break; no class meeting
Mar. 24:Turn in essays; read and discuss
Reading Assignment: Poems in Conversation
From the Norton and in handouts, read/review combinations of poems by Lynn Emmanuel (in re Gertrude Stein); Anne Carson (in re Akhmatova); Eloise Klein Healy (in re Sappho and Whitman); W.S. Merwin (in re Berryman); Kenneth Koch (in re Williams); Frank O'Hara and Mayakovsky ("True Accounts ..."); Billy Collins (“Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes”); Elliot Fried (“Richard Wilbur … I want you dead”); and etc ...
Writing Assignment: In Conversation
Write a poem in which you interact in some way with a (dead or living) poet whose work "speaks" to you; speak back. You may incorporate lines and phrases from the poet’s work into your own, interweaving them,
and/or incorporate images from the poet’s life or work into your poem, into your own experience. The poem may be reverent or irreverent or both.
Mar. 31:Workshop class poems
Assignment: Revision of this week’s poem; bring copies to next class.
Apr. 6: Attend reading at downtown library (optional)
Apr. 7:Workshop revisions
Reading Assignment: The Lush, the Lyric, the Oracular
From the Norton, read sections on Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton, Theodore Roethke, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds
Writing Assignment: True Confessions
Sharon Olds once told a group of workshop participants, "If you haven't written something that you're terrified to read aloud, you haven't gone deep enough yet." Write a poem in lush, lyrical language that breaks at least one of your own taboos. Bring copies to next class (Apr. 21).
Apr. 14:No class meeting. Begin assembling materials for final portfolio; schedule conference with instructor, if necessary, for week of Apr. 19.
Apr. 21:Workshop class poems
In-class writing exercise: Holy Plainspokenness: Against Decoration
Reading: From the Norton, we’ll look at poems by William Carlos Williams, Charles Reznikoff, W.S. Merwin, Stanley Kunitz, Margaret Atwood and Gary Snyder; handouts of poems by Ginger Anderson and Nikki Giovanni.
Writing exercise: Straight Talk
Write a poem in which the language is spare and "simple" and straightforward, without decoration or apology; a meditation on the "everyday" or the "historical" or both; on what we may have been failing to notice in the world around us before we read this poem. 20 minutes to write, then time to read aloud.
Include this as the final poem in your portfolio.
Apr. 28:Final class meeting
Final portfolios due
Class reading/party/closing words
CLASS POLICIES:
Please be on time for class and keep up with the reading assignments.
Please bring all pertinent texts with you to every class meeting, along with all copies of hand-outs and the class poems for that week’s workshop. Failure to do so will lower your grade.
Absences: More than one absence will lower your grade
Participation: You are responsible for offering your classmates constructive criticism on their work, both in class discussions and by way of written comments on their poems.
You will be required to turn in a portfolio of your work at the end of the semester, including all assigned poems, both original versions and revisions submitted for the workshop. In addition, your portfolio should include FURTHER revisions of at last two of your poems. “Original,” “Revision,” and “Further Revision” of poems should be clearly marked as such and presented in sequence. The portfolio should also include the original draft and a revised draft of your essay. Final portfolios MUST be submitted at the last class meeting; I’ll accept an electronic version of your portfolio, in lieu of a hard copy, provided you submit it to me via e-mail as a Word doc attachment no later than noon on April 28.
Your grade will be determined by your level of participation in the workshop, response to the reading material, and the amount of effort you’ve put into writing assignments and revision as evidenced by the work presented in the final portfolio.