EN-470/670: Advanced Poetry Writing, Spring 2009
Dr. Susan
Swartwout
Office: GB
318-O (hours 3:30 – 5:00 T/R); phone 651-2641,
sswartwout@semo.edu
Four required texts:
• Two from the bookstore and/or textbook Rentals
Patterns of Poetry: An Encyclopedia of Forms by Miller Williams
The Autumn House Anthology of
Contemporary American Poetry edited by Sue Ellen Thompson.
• A chapbook from the University Press (your cost is $3), Back of the Envelope by Greg McBride.
Suggested reading for advanced writers
who want to send out work for publication:
A Student’s Guide to Getting
Published
by Susan Swartwout and Jim Elledge, Pearson/Longman Press.
Course Description:
Students will read and practice writing forms of poetry in a
discussion-oriented workshop setting.
•
Reading:
We will read and
discuss “traditional” forms as well as marginalized and experimental works. In
addition, we will
occasionally read essays by poets that impact both writer as creator and
audience as market.
•
Professional review: You will
each “adopt” a very contemporary poet (with a book published since 2004)
1) read one of her or his collections,
published in 2004 or after
2) write a review of the writer’s work (min.
750 words)
Examples of good review
format are available at www.raintaxi.com and
www.litline.org/ABR/samples.html.
Browse through several
books to find a writer whose work piques your interest. Or let’s talk about your
interests, and I’ll make a few suggestions. The review is due the week after
Spring Break (Week 9).
•
Writing:
Writing for the course
will focus on poetry, both free-form and traditional patterns. A portfolio of
your work will be developed during the semester. Revisions are a necessary part
of any writing course, and the amount of work you invest in your revisions and
portfolio will be considered as well as the final draft of the work. Attach all
first drafts (not all copies of all drafts) to the back of each final draft of a
poem. All pieces included in the final portfolio must have been reviewed by your
associates in our workshops or discussed in conference and revised.
Pattern or Form poems:
At any workshop during the semester, you will write and turn in for workshop the
following form poems: a sestina, a Pindaric Ode of at least 3 stanzas (rhyming
or not, you decide, but it must have line-length and/or meter pattern), and a
form of your choice. Use your Patterns
of Poetry to guide you in format and in selection.
Avoid workshopping "blank verse" poems
and "haiku" unless you are exquisitely good at them. Otherwise, please practice
these lovely but scathingly abused patterns at home alone.
•
Journal: Keep a journal in
which you will write at least half a page at least three times a week (39 to 42
entries or more). I have some good prompts, if you’d like to try them. Just ask
for a copy. Journals are a history of your life as well as a goldmine for poem
ideas. The journals will be included in your portfolio. Please do not recycle a
journal from another class or another period in your history, riveting though
that journal may have been.
•
Discussion: Participation in
workshop discussion is essential. We’ll review our vocabulary of terms, identify
audience(s), and help each other to address our work clearly and imaginatively
to that audience.
•
Format of workshop:
The class
will be composed of two groups. Every other week you will be drafting, revising,
and
turning in a poem to be workshopped the following week. The poems will be new
work, at least 14 lines long, and you may turn in up to 2 at a time. Although we
may only have time that week to workshop one of them, you’ll get written
comments on both. Note that you will have 6 workshops (for each group), so
you’ll need to turn in 2 poems at least once during the semester to compile 7
poems for the portfolio.
You will need to bring enough copies of your work for each member of the
class. The poetry that you submit to
the workshop should not be a first draft, but a revised and thought-out
structure. The next Wednesday, we
will talk about the work we received the prior week. You are expected to have
read each work and made comments in the margins and internally to the poem.
Comments should include your response to the poem overall, including any
questions/reactions you had while reading it. These copies will be handed back
to the author. Be sure to put your name on the final page to acknowledge your
comments.
Portfolio:
Your final portfolio will consist of 6 of the following well-revised
works:
• at least 5 poems, any form, consisting
of more than 14 lines each
• at least 1 more poem in any traditional
form
• & your journal
The
poetry portfolio will consist of well-developed work(s), typed. You will be
turning in 6 poems, but be aware
that
you should be writing more than this over the semester. The pages that you turn
in with your portfolio should be
your
best work overall.
Basis for Student
Evaluation:
• quality of final portfolio - 40%
• participation - 30%
• oral presentation and review - 20% •
daily assignments and quizzes- 10%
Absences:
Missing one day of class is equivalent to missing 3 classroom hours, and I
strongly oppose absences. Participation, quizzes, and turning in work comprise
40% of your grade.
Graduate Students:
Graduate students will complete two projects in addition to the regular
syllabus:
1) Lead the class in a short writing
exercise of your choice. Sign up for a particular week.
2) Write a minimum-three-page line
explication of any one of the poems that you've written this semester. This
analysis,
rather than being organized around your theme, will discuss each line of your
poem chronologically. Some of you may
find
this exercise painful, but keep in mind that, in the lines, you're seeing the
actual heartbeats of your poem, rather than
only
its thematic corpus. Due with your portfolio.
Students are responsible for
upholding the principles of academic honesty and classroom civility in
accordance with the "University Statement of Student Rights" found in the
STUDENT HANDBOOK.
Weekly Schedule
Note:
Poems should be read at least twice. Slowly. The poem read twice is a different
poem the second time. Your assignment is to bring that Twice-Read Poem to class
for discussion, not the briefly read-once poem.
Week
1: Intro and group assignments.
Week
2: Read Wendell Berry (pp 15-20). Group 1 turns in poems.
Week
3: Read Rita Dove (68-73). Workshop of Group 1 poems; Group 2 turns in poems.
Week
4: No class. Dr. Swartwout’s at the AWP Conference.
Week
5: Read Elton Glaser (95-99). Workshop of Group 2 poems; Group 1 turns in poems.
Week
6: Read Mark Jarman (157-162). Workshop of Group 1 poems; Group 2 turns in
poems.
Week
7: Read Maxine Kumin (181-184). Workshop of Group 2 poems; Group 1 turns in
poems.
Week
8: Read Nick Flynn (87-90). Workshop of Group 1 poems; Group 2 turns in poems.
Week
9: SPRING BREAK.
Week
10: Read Dorianne Laux (185-188). Workshop of Group 2 poems; Group 1 turns in
poems.
Week
11: Read Baron Wormser (391-396). Workshop of Group 1 poems; Group 2 turns in
poems
Week
12: Read Natasha Trethewey (363-366). Workshop of Group 2 poems; Group 1 turns
in poems.
Week
13: Read Linda Pastan (282-284). Workshop of Group 1 poems; Group 2 turns in
poems.
Week
14: Read Thomas Lux (208-211). Workshop of Group 2 poems; Group 1 turns in
poems.
Week
15: Read Joy Katz (166-169). Workshop of Group 1 poems; Group 2 turns in poems
Week
16: Presentations on the poetry book that you reviewed.
Group 2 workshop.
Your
portfolio is due by 4 pm on May 13. A collection box will be outside my door at
GB 318-O.