Reforming Form: Rethinking Formal Strategies of Poetry
(Oct 4 - Nov 8)
Posted in Past ClassesInstructor: Sachiko Murakami
Duration: (6 weeks) 4 Oct – 8 November 2011 6:30-8:30 PM
Location: Of Swallows, Their Deeds and the Winter Below, 283 College, Upper Floors Seminar Room
In this six-week course designed for emerging writers interested in interrogating formal strategies and discussing contemporary poetry, participants will put poems through the formal grinder. What are the strategies of “traditional” forms like the sonnet, the glosa, the lipogram? How can we make form work for – or against – the poem? Where do the Formalist and Experimental poem meet? Through readings, discussions, and their own writing, participants will explore formal constraints both historical and contemporary to shake up your ideas about what formal writing is.
FORMAT
DISCUSSION: Before each class, participants will read materials and come to class prepared to discuss the characteristics and potentialities of each form family; historical context from which these forms arose; why these forms could or could not continue to be useful in our own writing; the success or failure of the examples we read; how or why we might go about writing through these forms ourselves; and why these forms persist in contemporary poetry.
WRITING: Participants will experiment with these form through the reformation of an original source poem. At-home writing will be shared and critiqued in class.
READING: Examples of each form and some critical texts will be handed out at each class and discussed the following week.
Reading materials and course schedule to be distributed at the beginning of first class.
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