ENGL 200-01, Creative Writing: Introductory Poetry Workshop, Spring 2009

Abstract

This class will introduce students to principles of good poetry, including prosody, through readings in The News from Poems: A Poetry Handbook, by your professor, (a project I’m working on) and The Wadsworth Anthology of Poetry, (2 texts). Students are expected to analyze and prepare to discuss the reading, so that they will make significant contributions to class discussion. Please don’t hesitate to share your own interests with the class, by bringing in work by writers whose poems you admire. The more each member contributes in different ways to the workshop the more interesting it will be. A word here---students sometimes think that this course will be an “easy” one, but instead find it can be one of their most difficult classes. Most of us have written poetry to express our feelings, but poetry is an art, and it requires perhaps more discipline and hard work to achieve a decent poem often, than to write a good essay. You will have to relinquish the idea that you can express your feelings on paper, and that will be enough. It won’t. You’ll need to edit extensively, to re-think and re-write sections of your poem in order to make it a piece of thoughtful work, rather than purely and solely an expression of self. In addition, because you are expressing your feelings, you’ll have to be willing to examine them and share them, and that takes courage.