English 816-001
Seminar in Poetry Writing: The Short Poem
Instr: Liddy, James
Office: CRT 517; 229-5441
e-mail: NONE
Office Hours: T; 3:00-5:00pm; by app.
Course Information: M; 7:30-10:10pm; CRT 468
Course Description
A workshop is many things: a deadline for getting writing done, a form of publication by presentation, a forum of discussion of the texts, and a feeling for poetics. Each student hands in work on a regular basis and signs it, copies it, and reads it in class. The participants should provide oral, and if they wish, written comments on class poems.
By semester's end students should assemble a portfolio that records progress in poem writing (18 pages minimum) and a statement on process of poetics (8 pages). Poetry has dimensions, the instructor is happy to advise and warn. There will be conferences, exercises, a group outing, perhaps a reading of tea leaves. For some part of the semester the instructor may set up conferences instead of the class meeting.
A student will be permitted two absences; barring emergencies, incompletes will not be given. Poor attendance will reduce the grade.
There are four texts, H.D. End to Torment; Garcia Lorca, In Search of Duende; Jack Spicer, The House That Jack Built; Louis Zukofsky, A Test of Poetry. Each student will choose two passages from two of these volumes on poetics by practicing poets to give an in-depth class report; in addition two of the portfolio poems should be imitations/adaptions of short poems from two of the above poets. I leave the length of a short poem to the student's imagination.
Grades: 60% portfolio, 20% discussion and report, 20% paper.
Wallace Stevens, "Now, Wilbur, you're good but you must stop publishing in The New Yorker...Money doesn't matter. If you're a poet, you must be prepared to be poor, if that's necessary. You must live like a monk. You must sacrifice yourself to your work."
