Master Class in Poetry

Making good poems requires the writer to “understand that to burden a work of art with any ulterior motive, to impress it with one’s hopes or wishes, is to weaken it and lay an obstacle in the path of a pure achievement.” So says Heinrich Petzet in his forward to Rilke’s “Letters on Cezanne.” This 10-week workshop is for those who have committed themselves to the work of reading and writing poetry. Within it we will make new work as well as revise existing work in a collaborative workshop setting where we learn as much from the successes and failures of others’ drafts as we do from our own. This class will examine what strong poetry does, but also what it might still do. Only those with previous workshop experience should register.