More or Less? [Rae Armantrout]

Modernist poet Ezra Pound famously said that poetry is the most compressed form of verbal expression. By this he didn’t mean that a poem is necessarily brief. He meant that poetry packs more meaning (or activity) into each word than does any other literary form. In this course you will study poems by such masters as Emily Dickinson and William Carlos Williams to see how they accomplish this feat. Special emphasis will be placed on the process of revision. Students will examine early drafts of works by well known figures. Rae Armantrout will also discuss several versions of one of her own pieces. Class members will practice creative revision. There will also be in-class writing exercises to generate new work.

Students must submit three poems in progress—or finished poems with which they are not entirely satisfied—by October 25 in one document to christine@hugohouse.org

Please also be prepared to distribute copies of your poems to your classmates in class.