and then I found the syllabus for one of my classes, and died of too much joy
Friends, did you know that colleges do everything on the internet now? And that you can find your syllabus online before the first day of class? I don't think I'll ever stop missing Walter Davis's typewritten packets, with their crooked photocopying (you know he used to mimeograph them), but the thrill of being able to anticipate what's going to happen before school actually begins more than makes up for the lack of charming typewriter fonts. (I imagine that Simic is of the generation that won't be posting things online, but Rivard certainly seems to embrace this newfangled way of teaching.) Anyway, I am in so much awe:
This version of Form & Technique is essentially a hybrid vehicle, mixing elements that might be found in a course on poetics (thinking about poetry) with those that are more common to a course grounded in practice (prosody). In short, I’d like us to examine how poets actually go about making their poems, and what assumptions might guide them (whether they know it or not). You can think of the many paradoxes and contradictions we’ll encounter as the fuel for our little vehicle-to be driven, I hope, only on those “crooked roads” that Blake speaks of as the autobahns of genius.
Behind much of what we talk about this semester will be the idea of the poem as an “enactment,” an event made out of words that exists through itself, through the arranged energy of thought and feeling, not because it refers to some thing outside of itself. As Robert Creeley would put it, the poem is neither a “description” or a “signboard,” it is that process in which everything is at stake: “Again and again I find myself saved, in words-helped, allowed, returned to possibility and hope.” We’ll be looking at how this takes place through image, tone, rhythm, syntax, metaphor, lyric and dramatic structures, narration, discursive statement, open forms, etc. We’ll also look, in a general way, at the problem of aesthetic distance, and how “authenticity” might differ from “sincerity.” Finally, I’d like the class to be informed by something Czeslaw Milosz said: “the purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person”-an idea that’s really about what it means to be human, and what it’s like to live inside of both history and dreams (all at once).
The format of this seminar: the first half of each class will be taken up with discussion of the central ideas embodied by that week’s reading; the second half will focus on discussion of 4 poems that seem to exemplify those ideas (or contradict them). We’ll be looking at writings about the art by some of its best practitioners. I hope you find them both inspiring and challenging, perhaps even baffling at times. Bring your passion and your love for the art. In the end, I hope that this class is really about how you will continue to make and re-make yourselves as writers and teachers long after you leave here.
I am all bliss. Already.
This version of Form & Technique is essentially a hybrid vehicle, mixing elements that might be found in a course on poetics (thinking about poetry) with those that are more common to a course grounded in practice (prosody). In short, I’d like us to examine how poets actually go about making their poems, and what assumptions might guide them (whether they know it or not). You can think of the many paradoxes and contradictions we’ll encounter as the fuel for our little vehicle-to be driven, I hope, only on those “crooked roads” that Blake speaks of as the autobahns of genius.
Behind much of what we talk about this semester will be the idea of the poem as an “enactment,” an event made out of words that exists through itself, through the arranged energy of thought and feeling, not because it refers to some thing outside of itself. As Robert Creeley would put it, the poem is neither a “description” or a “signboard,” it is that process in which everything is at stake: “Again and again I find myself saved, in words-helped, allowed, returned to possibility and hope.” We’ll be looking at how this takes place through image, tone, rhythm, syntax, metaphor, lyric and dramatic structures, narration, discursive statement, open forms, etc. We’ll also look, in a general way, at the problem of aesthetic distance, and how “authenticity” might differ from “sincerity.” Finally, I’d like the class to be informed by something Czeslaw Milosz said: “the purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person”-an idea that’s really about what it means to be human, and what it’s like to live inside of both history and dreams (all at once).
The format of this seminar: the first half of each class will be taken up with discussion of the central ideas embodied by that week’s reading; the second half will focus on discussion of 4 poems that seem to exemplify those ideas (or contradict them). We’ll be looking at writings about the art by some of its best practitioners. I hope you find them both inspiring and challenging, perhaps even baffling at times. Bring your passion and your love for the art. In the end, I hope that this class is really about how you will continue to make and re-make yourselves as writers and teachers long after you leave here.
I am all bliss. Already.