In this course, students will spend a semester devoted to the poetic arts. Each week students will create and present a new work of poetry which they will turn in for feedback from the professor and their peers. This could take the form of small group workshops, individual meetings with professors and visiting writers, online critiques, and presentations in front of the whole classroom. Since the act of writing is inseparable from that of reading, each week students will read the work of a particular writer (along with essays, interviews, and reviews) and write a poem based on a principle, form, technique, or theme they have identified in the work of the poet they read. Readings in class will be both historic and contemporary, often bringing into the discussion the many literary movements which of our writers have been associated with. While working on individual poems, students will also learn to pay particular attention to the book as an unit of thought and develop ideas about sequence, structure, and seriality. The semester will conclude with a presentation of a poetry chapbook.
