This intermediate-level course explores poetry that is engaged in some way with a source text, a document (broadly interpreted, can we have visual texts?) from which language is borrowed, scavenged, or reworked to aid in the poet’s creation of creative work. Source texts will range from war dictionaries, to news media, to Homeric classics, to spoken personal testimony--students should be prepared to encounter a range of non-poetry documents and hybrid writing forms throughout the semester. How do poets recontextualize the artifacts and texts of (a) culture to remark upon it? How are they poised in relation to the person, institution, or place they “borrow” from? And how do they handle notions of “truth,” “fact,” and “fiction” that quickly emerge with this approach? Together we’ll ask how (using what techniques) and why (to what literary and/or social ends) these poets wield “non-original” language in their poetry. Along the way we’ll try our own hand at the techniques and methodologies that we notice, via in-class writing experiments. Students will also engage with craft discussions, produce one new poem a week, produce weekly reading responses, revise their own poetry, and give feedback to their peers in a workshop format. By semester’s end students will have completed and revised a portfolio of new original writing, introduced by a critical essay on craft. Pre-req of LLSW 2030 Intro Poetry minimum grade of B.

In this intermediate poetry writing course, students will continue the work of introduction to poetry, with particular attention paid to the initial work of making the poem and subsequent deep revision. In addition to regular workshops, the course includes readings, and presentations from the readings, of modern and contemporary poets selected by the class.