Fall 2005

E 318L • Poetry (33020-33035)

Course Description

Poetry is a craft, a practice--as music is, as carpentry is. There are things to be learned, although that doesn't mean you can't start writing poems before you've learned them, any more than you must avoid singing before you've been taught sonata form. Still, odd results will occur if you start constructing a table without some fundamental knowledge of how tables (or power saws) work.

This, then, is a course in the principles of table design, for poets. We will write a lot of poems and will read a lot more, for this is not just a "how-to-write" course: it's primarily a how-to-read course, with the ultimate goal being how to read what you yourself have written so as to (re)write it more effectively.

Grading Policy

Writing assignments 75%
Attendance and participation 25%

Texts

Helen Vendler, Poems, Poets, Poetry: An Introduction and Anthology (New York: Bedford Books).

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