This advanced poetry writing workshop will focus on the asking of questions (and uncertainty, ambiguity, mystery) as a wellspring of poetic energy. Every week we will create new and curious work, cultivate the sustainable generative practices to keep that new work innovative and formally exciting (for both yourself and your audience), and exchange meaningful craft-driven feedback in a community. This course will help you to substantially grow your overall body of work in preparation for the Senior Seminar experience in your graduation semester. Together we’ll figure out what revision can do for our existing projects, how to engage and employ the techniques of other poets that we admire, and how to write the most impactful poem possible at this moment in our lives, one that asks questions worth living inside. Students should be prepared to challenge their own aesthetics and experiences in poetry through the readings, assignments, prompts, and workshop process. We’ll start simply by asking: What do we want our poetry to be doing in the world, especially now? When should it ask questions, and when should it attempt answers? Must be enrolled in one of the following Classifications: Junior, Fifth Year, or Senior. Pre-req of LLSW 3520 Intermediate Poetry minimum grade of C. After the first week of the semester, permission of the instructor will be required in order to register for this course.

In this advanced poetry writing class, the focus of the course will be twofold: one the workshop and one an examination on the relationship between forms (closed and open, to use the language of Charles Olson). Of the latter, we will think about and practice the ways in which forms can function with, and perhaps, against, our own creative impulses, as well as the ideas of poetry (content, history, genre, school, etc.). Through a combination of workshops and presentations, we will focus on how we as poets might use what poets have done to investigate ways of writing that seem a little outside our usual ways of thinking. Must be enrolled in one of the following Classifications: Junior, Fifth Year, or Senior. Pre-req of LLSW 3520 Intermediate Poetry minimum grade of C.