ENGL 7140 Poetry Writing
Graduate Poetry Workshop
4:00–6:40 W
Chris Forhan
In this course, students will write their own poems in the context of a study of various poetic movements and aesthetic inclinations in American poetry of the last few decades, from the loosened form and expanded subject matter seen in "confessional" poetry of the '50s and '60s to the indeterminacy and radical disjunctiveness evident in more recent "language" poetry. Throughout the semester, each student will write a number of poems to be critiqued in a workshop format, with the goal of submitting a final portfolio of revised poems. At the same time, as the class studies the work of a number of contemporary American poets, each student will keep a reading journal and contemplate the relation of his or her own work to the varied approaches to their art taken by these poets; at the end of the term, each student will write a brief essay proposing a poetics of his or her own.
Texts:
Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook. Harcourt, 1994.
Ramazani, Jahan, et al, ed. The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary
Poetry. 3rd ed. Vol. 2. Norton, 2003.
Requirements:
At least eight poems for workshops; reading journal; final portfolio; final
essay.