Workshop Details:
Title:
4 Week: Forms of Poetry
Cost:
$150.00
Description:
This class will introduce poets of all levels to the study and practice of major verse forms in English poetry. We will look at versification and prosody from a technical standpoint, but also dip our toes into the theoretical background and history of the craft. Each week we will read and imitate a line form (stress meters, syllabics, accentual syllabics, free verse) or a stanza form (sonnet, villanelle, ballad, etc.), the better to understand how some of our strongest poets have used language to make art. We will also take a look at the way these forms came into English from other languages, focusing on Greek, Latin, Provencal, Italian, and French (don’t worry – you don’t need to know these languages to take the class!).
We will also consider some of the many competing ideas about how verse language actually works, one of the most passionately debated subjects in all of poetics. This is a course for writers who want to learn more about their craft, and it differs somewhat from a traditional poetry workshop in that 1) students will be asked to practice tight forms as exercises; 2) we will not only be reading poems, but also some prose – mostly by poets – about how verseforms work and why. Students will learn not only how to write in a wide range of forms (including several forms of free verse), but also how to scan the poetry of others and how to approach questions of the history, theory, and craft of verse language.
Books
Preminger, Alex, and T. V. F. Brogan, Eds. The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.