“The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.” —G.K. Chesterton
This fall, students will explore the genre of lyric poetry by reading classic and contemporary examples and by writing and revising their own pieces. Our approach, in the beginning, is formal: students will write sonnets, villanelles/pantoums, and play in class with various complex forms. Later, students will move on to the Dinggedicht or ekphrasis, the long lyric poem in sections, and the free-verse poem. We will also work on translations, using as a touchstone Eliot Weinberger’s 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. Students will keep journals—looking at examples from Dorothy Wordsworth and taking instruction from Mary Oliver, Joan Didion, Katherine Mansfield, and others—in order to sharpen their skills of observation and develop the habit of reflection even as they begin to learn ways of using the material of daily life as grist for poetic expression.
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Work this semester in the poetry-writing class will be evaluated on process, effort, and the quality of the final piece. This way, each student will strive to improve her acuity of expression and sense of a lyric poem’s unfolding. Students will revise their pieces to produce a final portfolio at semester’s end.
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The Making of a Poem, Strand and Boland
19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, Weinberger The class will rely on many handouts with classic and contemporary examples of the form studied. Sonnet
Villanelle/Pantoum/Ghazal Dinggedicht/Ekphrastic poem Translation Long lyric Prose poem Free verse poem |