Week
#1: This introductory session will establish a consensus on what poetry is
(and is not); we will determine what the participants hope to get from the course;
we will establish the "rules of engagement" for writing exercises and feedback,
including the concept of "disinterested criticism." This done, writing exercises
will generate first drafts, which will be shared in class. These drafts will provide
the raw material for the first poem, which will be presented to the group, typed
and photocopied, in the next session (sharing is strongly encouraged, but not
required).
Week
#2: Share at least one poem generated in the previous class, with feedback.
The focus this week will be on "showing vs. telling"—the concept, as William
Carlos Williams put it, that there are "no ideas but in things," or T.S. Eliot's
"objective correlative." Simply put, we will explore the reasons and methods for
not writing "I was really scared," when what we mean is, "Heart pounding like
a jackhammer, I buried my face in the grass and clenched my eyes closed." The
use of concrete, rather than abstract, language will also be explored.
Week
#3: Sharing, with feedback. Our focus will be on the line and line breaks
as basic building blocks in the poem. We will differentiate between end-stopped
and enjambed (run-on) lines, and we will explore the effects of various line lengths.
Week
#4: Sharing, with feedback. We will explore point of view today—from
whose (or what) vantage point is the speaker in the poem speaking? Not all poems
that deal with personal issues are autobiographical (although most readers/listeners
assume they are). Our exercises will help us to experience the effects of becoming
someone or something else in our writing, and to understand the different "feel"
that a poem has when it is written in first, second, or third person (and from
a singular or plural perspective).
Week
#5: Sharing, with feedback. Figures of speech--specifically, metaphor and
simile will be our focus today. Beyond what each is, we will consider what each
does (and how), and its relationships with "showing vs. telling" and point of
view. The controlling metaphor (cf. symbolic story, fable or parable) will also
be explored.
Week
#6: Sharing, with feedback. The music of poetry will capture our attention
and our ears this week. We will explore the various qualities and techniques that
give a poem its sound—rhythm, rhyme, repetition, alliteration, assonance,
consonance, diction, grace and syntax—and how these can work together (or
not) with the poem's content to establish an overall feel or texture. We will
reacquaint ourselves with the basic metric feet (but we won't get too well acquainted—for
those who are intimidated, or bored, by scansion) in order to better understand
the rhythm of the poet's language, whether it appears in an Elizabethan sonnet,
a limerick, structured "free" verse, blues, rap, or what have you. This session
may be continued, if necessary, during week #7.
Week
#7: Sharing, with feedback (and completion of the music of poetry, if necessary).
This week we will take a hands-on look at the revision process. With the understanding
that revision means "re-vision" or to see again where the poem wants to go, we
will first discuss some basic areas of revision (voice, shape, diction, syntax,
lines, rhythm, sound, coherence, texture, etc.); then we will follow one poem
through its early drafts to its final version; we will conclude by applying the
process to poems that have been written during the previous weeks (or other poems
written by the participants).
Week
#8: Sharing, with feedback. In our first look at formal poetry, we will spend
time with the sonnet this week. The basic rhyme scheme and meter of the Petrarchan,
Elizabethan and Spenserian sonnets will serve as our introduction, from which
we will move into the sonnet in contemporary poetry. Our discussion will include
the common themes of love, meditation, nature, elegy and celebration. Participants
may work both within the standard forms or outside them.
Week
#9: Sharing, with feedback. Number two on the formal poetry list will be the
villanelle. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" is perhaps
the best known of this form, characterized by five tercets, each with an a-b-a
rhyme scheme; the first and last lines of the first tercet alternating as the
last lines of each successive stanza; and a closing quatrain that ends the poem
with these two repeated lines.
Week
#10: Sharing, with feedback. Our third experience with formal poetry will
be the sestina, which is characterized by six six-line stanzas (sestets), one
final three-line stanza (tercet), and the systematic repetition of the six end
words from the first stanza as end words throughout the poem. It's actually easier
than it sounds. We will investigate the interplay of line length and content in
our creation of sestinas.
Week
#11: Sharing, with feedback. Our fourth form will be the pantoum, which is
composed of quatrains (as many as you care to write); the second and fourth lines
of each become the first and third lines of the next stanza. The final quatrain
repeats the first and third lines of the opening stanza as its fourth and second
lines, respectively, so that each line in the poem is used twice.
Week
#12: Sharing, with feedback. While they are not strictly forms, blues, jazz,
and rap poems have easily recognizable styles and characteristics. We will explore
them through their respective musical origins, their characteristics, their tones,
and their themes.
Week
#13: Sharing, with feedback. With the writing, technical, formal and stylistic
foundation of the previous twelve weeks, we will put what we have done to work
in an effort to help each poet find his or her voice. Through a broad survey of
contemporary poems, accompanied by specific exercises, poets will be invited to
write in the form and the style of their choice and about the themes that are
important to them. Poems of witness, of oppression, of love, of whimsy, of despair,
of hope, of remembrance, of joy, etc., etc., etc. will be possible. Poets will
develop one long poem or a series of shorter poems (many of which will have been
generated in earlier sessions) during these final three classes.
Week
#14: Sharing, with feedback. We will continue the survey of contemporary poems
and writing exercises, as well as the development of one long poem or a series
of shorter poems.
Week #15: Poets will be invited to share their favorite work with the group,
with or without feedback. We will do one final exercise "for the road," address
ways to keep the writing going for those who choose to, and formally evaluate
the course.
