TOPICS IN CREATIVE WRITING-FORMAL POETRY

Jim Harms

Office: 461 Stansbury, 293-3107 x451; 284-8080 (home); jharms@wvu.edu

"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

--W. B. Yeats

"Follow, poet, follow right

To the bottom of the night,

With your unconstraining voice

Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse

Make a vineyard of the curse,

Sing of human unsuccess

In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise."

--W.H. Auden

I've tried to keep the design of this class simple. I feel a creative writing topics course should involve a good deal of writing, but also quite a bit of specialized reading. In other words, what we read should pertain to a particular topic, in this case, traditional poetic forms in poetry, and ultimately serve as the model for the writing.

To that end, the semester will begin with three weeks of general discussion of form culminating in a test on specific poetic terms. From that point on, we will alternate class by class, spending one class period discussing a specific form (the sonnet, sestina, villanelle, blank verse, syllabics, rhyming quatrain, etc.), the following class workshopping poems written in that form. The final two weeks of the semester will be spent discussing free verse and prose poetry in the context of the formal considerations we have spent the term wrestling with. All told you will write six poems for this class, plus a postcard poem.

Your final portfolio will consist of all your poems revised, plus a five to seven page paper that discusses the history, features, nuances, difficulties and delights of one particular form. This will involve some research on your part, since we won't have time in our weekly discussions to do complete justice to each form. I will ask to see the paper three weeks before the end of the semester so that I can suggest revisions for the final version.

Your final grade will be based equally (33.3%) on three components: your involvement in the weekly discussions/workshops (attendance and participation), your improvement as a writer of formal poems (portfolio), and your efforts as a student of form (the test on poetic forms; the paper on a particular form; general erudition on this topic, postcard poem).

Since half of our time will be spent workshopping poems, please understand the seriousness with which I take this process. The attached "Workshop Guideline" articulates my philosophy for the workshop, and though we will read it aloud together, it would be wise to return to this from time to time to remind yourself of what's at stake in this class.

I will hand out xeroxed essays on a regular basis. I've also placed on reserve most of the library's holdings on prosody and form; I'll be assigning from these books as well from time to time. You will probably want to make use of the reserve readings when doing your research for your final paper.

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms by Mark Strand (Editor), Eavan Boland (Editor)

Strong Measures: Contemporary American Poetry in Traditional Forms, edited by Philip Dacey and David Jauss.

A Poet's Guide to Poetry (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing) by Mary Kinzie.

All the Fun's in How You Say a Thing: An Explanation of Meter and Versification by Timothy Steele.

The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky.

The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody (Slp Writers Guide) by Alfred Com.

Meter in English: A Critical Engagement by David Baker.