Fall & Winter Poetry Workshop [Bill Carty]
This course will begin in the fall with readings, prompts, and discussions designed to provoke investigations into the opportunities available in free-verse poetry. Following a break for the holidays, the course will resume with an eye toward developing, critiquing, and inspiring long-term poetic endeavors.
The class will be structured around weekly discussions of student poems. At the same time, we will read a range of poets from the Romantics to the present day in order to explore free verse poetry. These readings will also give way to writing exercises and in-class writing prompts.
Below are a few examples of the areas of free verse we’ll be investigating, along with a list of some of the poets we’ll read in each area. There will be many more!
Changing forms: incl. Charles Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, and Jack Spicer.
Prose intersections: incl. Thomas De Quincey, Italo Calvino, Claudia Rankine, and Dawn Lundy Martin.
Un-“disciplined” experiments (writing w/ art): incl. Gertrude Stein, Frank O’Hara, Barbara Guest, and Eileen Myles.
Metaphor: incl. John Keats, Jean Follain, Chika Sagawa, and Amiri Baraka.
As we begin course discussions, we’ll be able to shape the readings and exercises based on student input and interests. The class will be flexible in this regard!
The first class will begin with a look at sonnets, both traditional and experimental.
