Weeks 1-3

Weeks 4-6

Weeks 7-9

Weeks 10-12

Weeks 13-15

Portfolio &
Anthology 
Guidelines

MAP Website

Other Poetry 
Web Sites

Susan Tichy's
Main Page
 

Grading & Format  ~  Portfolio #1  ~   Portfolio #2  ~  Portfolio #3

Personal Anthology  ~  Notes on live poetry readings

Grading standards:

Completeness: are all the poems & exercises there?

Quality of original pieces and a sense of development over time.

Evidence that you understood and adhered to assignments to a reasonable extent & that you learned something from doing them. 

Quality and evidence of a sound process in revisions.

Overall brilliance, of course. This can make up for deficiencies elsewhere, but don't count on it.

Format:

Include a table of contents.

If I've seen the piece before, I want to see the same copy I saw first time, including my notes and scribbles on it. If I haven't seen it, give me a copy one of your Small Group members wrote on. If no one has seen it, OK, I'll take a clean copy.

Be sure each page has a header identifying it. Do not staple or bind the different poems & exercises together.

For a piece you have revised: Create a new header including the words "Revision #1", with a new date as well. Even if you've revised it six times, call it #1 if this is the first revision I've seen. Call it Revision #2 if this is the second revision I've seen, etc. Staple all versions together with the newest on top and the original on the bottom. Do not staple this little stack to anything else.

Please print your revisions in the same font and format, so the two versions match visually as closely as possible. Using a colored pen or highlighter in the margin, or some combination of color and marginal notes, indicate what you have changed. This is, obviously, to save me time. It doesn't mean I won't read the piece thoroughly: it means I'll know what to look for in the revision. Unmarked revisions may not be read. 

Put all your pieces in order and place them in a large manila envelope. Label the outside with your name, my name, the course number, and the word "Portfolio" on there somewhere.  Do not use a loose or pocket folder and do not use a heavy binder. When packaging, imagine me dropping your portfolio in the parking lot in the rain.

See special instructions for packaging your last portfolio.

If you want to add marginal or other notes on your process, what you were trying to do in a piece, and so forth, you may do so. Don't overdue it: notes won't replace good writing in your poems.

Your porfolio should have two sections. Please make a table of contents so I can can quickly check for completeness and find what I need to read in detail.

In Part One you merely collect all the writing you've done, both "notebook exercises" and drafts of poems. For work I have seen, you must enclose the original copy I read and scribbled on. If your small group has seen the work, enclose a copy one of your group members wrote on. For your convenience, here is a list of what you should have. 

If you completed additional exercises or poems in conjunction with a set of readings and assigned exercises, include them with the other work from that week. If you wrote additional poems without any specific relationship to assigned readings, place them last in Part One.

From Week 2:

• 2 poems generated from PC  p.28-29 or p.92-93 or from notes on Ekphrastic poems
• 3 notebook projects started this week & continued throughout:
• PC  p.28 #1: events in your life
• notes for Getting outside yourself
• PC  p.92 #2: image notebook

• Metaphoric Portrait developed from in-class free-write last week
• And a poem generated from PC p.37-38
• Notebook exercise: p.36 #1: family traits, due in first portfolio

• Notebook exercise: CP p. 113 #2 
• Notebook exercise: What's in a line?
• Notebook exercise: Testing the line
• A poem in Counterpointed Lines (version 1 or version 2)
• A narrative poem, with special concentration on the way you make & use your lines

• Notebook exercise: PC  p.114 #7/8, using a poem by a writer you admire
• 2 poems generated from PC p. 113 #3 or #4,  or exercises on class web

• Any additional poems you have written that you want me to know about.

If a poem has been revised, place the revised version first, followed by a copy of the original. (Yes, I know this is redundant with part one, but it's efficient when I'm reading.) Please retain the original header on the original, so I know what assignment it grew from.

Are revisions required at this point? Maybe. If the drafts you have been bringing to class are fairly good, have gone through some revision before we see them, and are receiving a good response from me and from your peers, probably not. If, on the other hand, the drafts you have been bringing to class are mostly first drafts, not very advanced, and/or you have been receiving a lot of feedback urging you to change your approach or take your poems farther, then clearly it will be to your advantage to work on some of those poems before turning in the portfolio.

This portfolio should be in three parts.

Format and general requirements for Parts One & Two are the same as for Portfolio #1. Part One should include all the exercises and drafts of poems you have completed since turning in your first portfolio.

Part Three should consist of at least two revised poems from the first portfolio. Place the newest revision on top, followed by the last version I saw, followed by the original. As always, please use the actual copy or copies I wrote on. If you want to keep your first portfolio intact, you may substitute legible photocopies of your earlier drafts.

Itemized list for Part One

Begin with Week 5 if you did not include these in your first portfolio.

From Week 5:

• Notebook exercise: PC  p.114 #7/8, using a poem by a writer you admire
• 2 poems generated from PC p. 113 #3 or #4,  or exercises on class web

• Scansion exercise on the web schedule for week 6 and/or the scansion exercise I handed out in class.
• Elegy or related poem
• One of your own poems scanned

• Notebook exercise: CP p.184 #4: analyze your sentences
  
• Notebook exercise: CP p.184 #5: analyze your use of adjectives 
• Notebook exercises: CP p.177-178, p.181
• An unrhymed poem in iambic pentameter or iambic tetrameter.
  

• Poem based on a "plan of attack" from a poem in the reading
  

• Getting Outside Yourself (you do not need to turn in the notes)

• Two closed couplets
• Two open couplets
• Two ballad quatrains
• Two alternating quatrains 
• Two envelope quatrains or two quatrains with interlocking rhyme (as in "Stopping by Woods")
• A poem developed from one or more of the above
  

• A sonnet

For this portfolio, choose the six or seven poems you want to represent your work for this semester.
Spend the last two weeks of the semester working on these poems.

• For poems from Portfolio #2 that have not been revised further, just turn in the most recent version.

• For poems that have been revised, present them according the format described for Part Three of the second portfolio. 

At least one poem must be completely reconceived and remade. As a model for how to do this you can use the handout on my poem "A Painter's Story About Greece" or possibly #s 4, 5. 8 or 9 on page 190 of PC. If you use one of those PC suggestions, be sure you are fully reconceiving the poem, not just tinkering with part of it.

For your small group, please make copies of the newest versions of all the poems in this portfolio.  If you want to make copies for the whole class, you certainly may. On May 5, when you turn in your portfolios, we will swap poems and read aloud.

Packaging: We are no longer allowed to leave student work for pick-up in public places. So, there is one and only one way you will get your last portfolio back: by US Mail. Turn in the portfolio in a USPS Priority Mail envelope with postage attached. Be sure to use stamps, not a postal meter, so the package can be mailed on any future date. Portfolios turned in without the Priority Mail envelope & attached postage will not be returned.  (I specify Priority Mail so you won't have to worry about the exact weight of the package.)

For most of you this is your second or third class in creative writing. You may take many more, or none, but all will be of limited duration and limited usefulness to you as a poet. Only one teacher is limitless: the great body of poems in English and in English translation from which you can learn for the rest of your lives. This assignment is designed to both advance and test your ability to learn from reading. 

In general, I will be looking for evidence of three things: 1) your knowledge of how poems are made, 2)  your command of the sometimes arcane terminology that makes discussion of poetic craft possible, and 3) your application of the methods of analysis and imitation discussed in class.

Here are the guidelines.

• Your basic assignment is to discuss four poems from which you have learned, or four poems which illustrate, certain aspects of poetic craft. Choose
  
 
• one poem in which to discuss image & metaphor
• one poem in which to discuss narrative
• one free verse, syllabic or accentual poem in which to discuss line, line breaks and rhythm and (if applicable) the shaping of stanzas
  
• one iambic poem in which to discuss line and meter and (if applicable) the shaping of stanzas.

• In one of these discussions, you must also talk about sound in the poem: rhyme, slant rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, etc.  You may choose which poem. Be sure to do more than point out that the sound pattern or affect is there. For example: "In lines 4-6 he uses internal rhyme" is a start, but you need to say what he uses it for, such as "The internal rhyme in lines 4-6 makes that part of the poem slower and more sensual than the lines that come next," or "The internal rhyme in lines 4-6 make a clattering noise, like the feet those lines are describing."
  
 
• Type each poem; do not photocopy and do not scan. You may be surprised by what you learn about a poem simply by typing out its every letter, comma, and line break.


• If you want to work on a long poem, choose a passage of workable length.
 
• Your "discussion" of the poem will be in two forms: marginal annotations and prose. Effective use of marginal annotation, underlining, circling, diagramming, etc. can make your prose discussion briefer and more efficient. I will pass out an example in class. 
 
• Mark up the poem as appropriate to your discussion. You may need to scan the poem, to mark rhyme and other relationships of sound, or points where a narrative or verse structure turns. If you want to use two copies of the poem, one for scansion and one for other matters, you may.
 
• Write a 500-750 word explication of the specific aspect of craft you need to address. Please include a word count.
 
• Be efficient and stick to the point: don't paraphrase the poem, tell me in detail what it means or how much you like it, or waste space with nonsubstantial introductions or conclusions. It is very important that you focus your short explication on the topic at hand and use your limited word count to say as much as possible. 
 
• I am the audience for this piece of writing; so
• don't explain the obvious ("This is a poem in thirteen lines.") 
• do demonstrate what you know about the poem and its relations to other poems. ("This poem has a sonnet-like structure but only thirteen lines.) 
• do use appropriate terminology. ("Anaphora", not "six lines begin with the same phrase").
 
• If you want to make a point via comparison with another poem, please enclose a copy of the poem you refer to. This "extra" poem may be photocopied or scanned.