The Poem Inside the Day

The use of days as literary units is a practice that can be traced to Basho’s Narrow Road to the Interior. From daybook to travelogue, short lyric to prose meditation, ecopoetics to elegy, here is a structural frame both open—to all that the day might contain—and strict: no swerve beyond the day into any other time or place. Reading W. G. Sebald, Kimiko Hahn, and others, this writing exercise–based class is for any writer ready to tap into the day’s abundance.