Under the Influence of Elizabeth Bishop [Carolyne Wright]
“I don’t like teaching,” was how Elizabeth Bishop began her legendary workshops at the University of Washington, “but we’ll practice a most useful poetic strategy—writing in form.” In this workshop modeled on her example, we’ll read poems by Bishop, Weldon Kees, Maxine Kumin, Marilyn Hacker, and younger neo-Formalists; explore how form helps poets achieve surprising leaps in their language; try received forms like pantoum, sestina, sonnet, triolet, and villanelle and nonce forms like anaphora and abecedarian; and complete a group of poems in form.