Mia Ayumi Malhotra
Intensive study of various aspects of the craft verse. Readings in contemporary verse and writing using emulation and imitation. Prerequisite: ENGL 283; ENGL 284.
This is a workshop-intensive class designed to help you think practically and conceptually about the process of poetry. By examining poetic structure, its conventions and (sometimes radical) applications, we will discover the ways in which poems embody processes of change in their patterns of shifts and reversals. We will examine the notion of “structure as process” both at the level of the poem and at the level of the book project, looking, for instance, at Kevin Young’s Ardency: A Chronicle of the Amistad Rebels as an extended enactment of the ironic structure and M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! as a deconstruction of elegiac form. In considering these texts and others, we will explore how the process(es) of poetry can participate in broader processes of justice and witness, engaging history in meaningful and imaginative ways. We will also discuss redaction, erasure, Lucie Brock-Broido’s “epistolary procession,” and other procedures that lead to the creation of poetry, then determine how these processes may be relevant to our own writing projects.
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
Class assignments and grading