ENGL 400-01, Advanced Poetry Workshop, Spring 2013

Abstract

Intended for writing majors focusing on poetry, this course builds on the material from Introduction to Poetry Writing and the Intermediate Poetry Workshop. Now that you are familiar with the basic elements of poetry and poetic form, we will extend our focus to explore some of the traditions and conventions that inform contemporary poetics. The course will follow a two-part structure. Roughly half of our time will be spent in critiquing your poems in workshop. We will use the other half of our time to discuss essays on poetry and aesthetics, reading these alongside a diverse selection of work by contemporary poets. The essays will cover a lot of territory—from the Classical period to the mid-20th century—but all are concerned with the big questions: What is poetry? What is a poet, and what is her role in society? How can we identify a ―good‖ poem? By the end of the semester you will have a clearer sense of how these questions figure into your own work, and you will have produced a substantial portfolio of poems.