ENGLISH
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POETRY WORKSHOP
Monday 4:30-7:10 ~ Robinson A-245

SUSAN TICHY / SPRING 2003

Office: Robinson A-431
703-993-1191 / stichy@gmu.edu
 Monday &Thursday 3:00-4:00 & by appointment


397 Main

Weeks 1-3

Weeks 4-6

Weeks 7-9

Weeks 10-12

Weeks 13-15

Assignment 
Guidelines

MAP Website

Other Poetry 
Web Sites

Susan Tichy's
Main Page

Visiting
Poets

 

Revised Grading Information  /  Revised Schedule  /  Outstanding Essays

Course Introduction

Poems are more fun and more meaningful when you know how they work. 

The way to find out how they work is to get your hands on them: take poems apart and put poems together.

Those are the assumptions behind this course, which is a hybrid experience: part writers’ workshop, part study of the forms, genres, and terminology of poetry. We will take poems apart by analyzing how they work and how they are made. We will put poems together by writing them.

During the semester, you should expect to compose and revise original poems, to complete writing exercises, to read and discuss poetry, to take part in workshop critiques, to learn poetic forms and terms from a textbook, and to attend poetry readings. 

Requirements include three portfolios of original poems and writing exercises, two annotated “personal anthologies” of poems illustrating aspects of poetic form, and probably several quizzes on terms and concepts. 

We will approach poetry as an art form, not as unmediated ‘self expression,’ so the course will best serve those with a lively interest in poems, a willingness to try different forms and approaches, and a general sense of literary adventure. 

You will also need a GMU e-mail account and access to a printer from which you can print e-mail.

This site is complete through the first nine weeks. Please read the course information below, then follow links at left to find weekly schedules & assignments.

REQUIRED BOOKS ~ GOALS ~ GRADING & POLICIES ~ CLASS FORMAT

SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE ~ MECHANICS FOR TURNING IN POEMS ~ WORKSHOP BASICS



Required Books:

The Poet’s Companion by Kim Addonizio & Dorianne Lux
Norton, 1997, 0-393-31654-8

Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry edited by Cary Nelson
Oxford, 2000, 0-19-51227102

The Sound of Poetry: A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998, 0-374-52617-6

Other Required Reading will include discussions & exercises on this web site (including some links to outside sites), your classmates' poems, and miscellaneous materials handed out in class.



Goals:

By the end of the semester you should have a better understanding of how poems work and how they are made. You should have expanded your vocabulary for discussing poems and be able to analyze how a poem's meanings are constructed, not simply conveyed. You should have an increased understanding of the historical origins and contexts of poetic forms and practices. Your own poems should be made more beautifully and more efficiently, and you should have mastered certain editorial techniques to help you revise and complete your poems. I hope you will enjoy poems even more and have an expanded appreciation of the range of poems and poetic forms available to us as readers and writers in the greatest consuming culture in history. Some of may have identified in yourselves enough talent and desire to continue writing poetry, perhaps as a lifelong vocation.



Grading & Policies: 

As of March 12: I have dropped one of the Personal Anthologies and adjusted grade percentages to make up for it.
Please make sure you review these changes.

Portfolio #1: 15%
Portfolio #2: 20%
Portfolio #3: 20% 
...so your writing, including your willingness to engage meaningfully with assigned exercises, makes up 55% of your final grade.

Anthology 25%
...so your engagement with reading and ability to learn poetic craft from reading makes up 25% of your final grade.

Participation in workshop & class discussions: 10%
Quizes: 10%
...so your engagement with the classroom and workshop process makes up 20% of your grade.  Your mastery of the mystery of poetic terminology will be measured by the quizes, but also by your ability to apply the terms and concepts you've learned in class discussions and in preparation of your anthology.

Notes on live readings will not be graded, but failure to hand in satisfactory notes will result in a subtraction from your participation grade.

Late assignments: Anthologies and the first two portfolios will be accepted up to one week late, with reduction of a full letter grade. No final portfolios will be accepted late, nor will individual poems due to the class, to your small group, or to me. If you do not have your poem the week it is scheduled for discussion, you will not have a poem discussed in that cycle.

Absence from class will be excused in case of serious illness, family emergency, auto accident, etc. You must call or e-mail me in advance to explain why you will be absent. Remember that if you miss one class you miss a week of class. GMU does not allow us to grade on attendance per se. However, you can't participate if you are not present, so more than one unexcused absence will result in a subtraction from your participation grade, as will chronic lateness or early departure. 

"Present" means present for the full duration of the class meeting. Quizes may be unannounced. They cannot be made up unless your absence was excused and you contacted me before class regarding the circumstances.

It goes without saying, but they like us to say it: This course is governed by the GMU Honor Code. Plagiarism is a serious offense that will result in failure in this class. Here's a definition of plagiarism.



Class Format: 

Most weeks you will read 10-15 poems (from the anthology and/or on line) plus a couple of chapters from the text books. You should be prepared to discuss this reading in class and to ask questions about it. You will be expected to understand terms used in the reading, and we will have unannounced quizes on terms and concepts.

In most class sessions we will discuss part of the reading, or I will present a mini-lecture covering the same material in more depth. Some weeks we may write in class. All this will take up to half the class time, with the rest devoted to workshop discussion of your poems.

In the weeks before Spring Break we'll have full-class workshop, in which each of you will have one poem discussed by the full group. This will allow us to get acquainted and to model and observe the workshop process. I will also provide written feedback on one of your poems approximately every other week.

After Spring Break, workshop will be in small groups of 4 to 5 and you will probably have at least four poems discussed. Again, you will receive writte feedback on a poem from me about every other week. 

After the first couple of weeks, you will be expected to send your poems for discussion via e-mail to the class list and to receive your classmates' poems the same way. You will need to print your classmates' poems, read them, write comments, and come to class prepared to discuss them. If you don't do this prep work at home there will be two consequences: bad workshops, followed by more policing from me. Let's not come to that.

During the semester you will also be required to attend two live poetry readings. Readings on campus will be announced. Others may be found in the Washington Post or by checking the web sites of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Georgetown University, George Washington University, the University of Maryland, The D.C. Arts Center, or other venues. One of the live readings may be a slam or performance. Turn in notes on each reading you attend. Guidelines



Schedule at a Glance:

Revised March 12. Please see revised schedule pages for Weeks 7-9 & Weeks 10-12.

Week 1: Jan 27: Introduction / In-class writing

Week 2: Feb 3: Image, Writing & Knowing / Full class workshop
Week 3: Feb 10: Metaphor & Simile, Writing about Family / Full class workshop
Week 4: Feb 17: Narrative Poems, Intro to Line / Full class workshop
Week 5: Feb 24: Accent, Duration, Meter, Line / Full class workshop / Portfolio #1 due Guidelines
Week 6: March 3: Meter, Elegy / Full class workshop

Week 7: March 10: Spring Break

Week 8: March 17: Meter & Scansion / Full Class workshop
Week 9: March 24: Back to basics: imagery, writing for a reader, the situation of the poem /  Quiz / Small group workshop
Week 10: March 31:
Imitation: The Ordinary / Small Group Workshop
Week 11: April 7:
Rhyme & Sound / Small Group Workshop / Personal Anthology due Guidelines
Week 12: April 14: Couplet, Quatrain, Sonnet / Small Group Workshop
Week 13: April 21: Quiz / Revision 1 / Small Group Workshop / Porfolio #2 due  Guidelines
Week 14: April 28: Revision 2  / Small Group Workshop  / Last week to turn in notes on live readings  Guidelines 

Week 15: May 5: Readings & Party / Portfolio #3 due today  Guidelines



Mechanics for Turning in Poems: 

For each poem or exercise you turn in, please indicate at the top of the page: your name, the course number & name, the date it was turned in,and  what poem or exercise it represents.

If the poem has been revised since it was first turned in, make a second header below or beside the first one, with the lavel "Revision #1" (or "Revision #2" etc.). Even if you have revised it six times, if this is the first revision I've seen, label it #1.

These mechanics are designed to minimize confusion & maximize my time when reading your poems. As you probably know, writing classes tend to dissolve in a deluge of paper whose precise origins no one can quite account for. For the same reason, you may find it easier to stay organized if you have two folders for this course, one for your own work and the feedback you've received, a second for your classmates' work and your feeedback for them.

When e-mailing poems, type or paste them into the body of your message. Do not send attachments. I will not open them.



Workshop Basics: 

Some of you may have experience in writing workshops; for others this will be a first. Here are a few thoughts on how it works.

1) Poetry workshop is a form of peer-teaching. Its success depends on each of you committing to an open, respectful process of both giving and receiving feedback. Workshopping a poem can be a stressful, sometimes highly emotional experience for the poet. It is important to remember that we are discussing the poem before us, not the character of the poet, the personal experience that may be referenced in the poem, or the general moral standing of the poem's subject. In other words, bad poems can be written on worthy subjects, and good ones can be written on subjects the reader doesn't much understand. Our interests as private readers will vary enormously; our interest as a workshop of poets must lie in the making of poems -- in craft, and in the ways craft constructs or gives access to experience.

2) Workshop is not a service station, to which you bring a poem to be fixed. It's a community to which you must contribute in order to receive. Learning takes place in workshop from all corners of the room: from listening to the rest of us discuss your poem, from listening to the rest of us discuss someone else's poem, and (perhaps most of all) from the process you go through as you read, appreciate, analyze and discuss your classmates' poems. From all these actions you develop your critical faculties, your internal editor, and your composing/revising skills.

3) The workshop will not and need not always reach consensus. It's frustrating when one reader praises the exact part of your poem someone else has just demolished, or vice versa, but it's part of the process. Audiences vary, readers vary, and part of your growth as a writer is deciding whom you are writing for. You may aim for clarity and a comfortable reader, or you may aim for complexity and a challenged reader. 

Whatever your aims, your ideal reader is someone who pushes you to improve, yet understands your intentions and your sensibility. A reader who is stringent, but wants you to be some other kind of writer won't help you as much but may prod you to try new things. A reader who only praises won't help you improve, but may give you the confidence to keep expanding your work.

Even within the limited audience world of a writing class, you will probably find good readers for your work. You may also find some whose opinions are of no use to you. Be patient please: a student whose ideas are less developed than yours may be furthering his or her own education in the process of discussing your poem. 

4) If you find yourself one of the less developed poets or critics in the room, take heart. You may, in fact, learn more this semester than those near the top of the achievement scale. Pay attention even to poems you don't understand, and always feel free to ask questions. Chances are that if you don't understand something, someone else is in the same position: do them a favor and be the one who asks.

5) Before class, it will be your responsibility to print the poems you have received by e-mail, read them, and make written notes on them for discussion. Be sure to print each poem on a separate page, or half page, so you can give your comments to the poets. For each poem, make marginal notes and then write a short paragraph of response and commentary. Be sure your notes are legible, comprehensible, and signed. You do not need to give me your notes. However, if it seems that you individually or the class in general may be dropping the ball on this process, I will start policing. Here are some guidelines:

  • Praise or dispraise has its place, but by itself it does not satisfy the requirement of this process. If you like it, it is up to you to figure out why you like it, what it does well, how it works. Since we are here not merely to read poems but to learn how to make them, focus your comments on details of how the poem is made.

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  • More specifically, focusing on "how the poem is made" means that you must address matters of form, sound, diction, rhythm, line, closure, metaphor,voice, etc.. The poem's subject will also be important, but it cannot be addressed alone, as if the words were prose.

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  • Pay close attention to issues that relate directly to the assignment or the kind of poem you have in front of you. If it comes from an exercise on line, pay attention to line; if it comes from an exercise on sound, pay attention to sound. However, you need not limit your comments solely to those issues.

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  • Whether you begin with details and work toward the general, or vice versa, you should at some point go through the poem and mark key passages. This is more than singling out lines you like and lines you don't like: use your marginal notes to indicate the poem's structure. How does it develop? Where does the voice change or the argument turn? Does some part of the poem "answer" or parallel another part? How does the end relate to the beginning?
  • Your comments will be most useful if the poet knows you have read the poem accurately. By 'accurately' I mean that you recognize what kind of poem it is, what kind of speaker it has, and what its general intentions are. So, it's a good idea to include a sentence or two stating your general reading of the poem. You may start with this, or work up to it as you read and re-read the poem. Here are examples:

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    • "I read this as a personal voice poem describing your relationship with your father. The line breaks convey a lot of tension." If you then point out that the fourth line break doesn't work, there's a context for your observation.

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    • "A descriptive poem merging a scene near your house with a river you saw in France. The way you remember seems to be as important as what you are looking at." You then might say the image of the bridge in fog is corny because it seems like a canned 'memory' not a real one. And then, if that corny image was prompted by a real memory, the poet can start figuring out why the written image seems faked.

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    • "The satire in this poem is so gross it really bothers me." This conveys that you know it's a satire, and that it goes too far for your taste. The poet may decide to tone down the satire or to write you off as a prig, but at least he or she knows the context for your more detailed comments. Or, if it wasn't a satire, the poet knows he or she has a major problem communicating tone.

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  • If you can't tell what kind of poem it is, try to figure out where the conflicting signals are coming from. Does tone shift and conflict? Does the poem start with material that doesn't need to be there? Does the speaker change? Does diction shift from lyrical to bureaucratic? Does it start out telling a story, then veer into abstraction?
6) In class, we  have a limited amount of time to devote to each poem, so it is important that we all come prepared to begin the discussion promptly. Our task, remember, is more than simply telling the poet whether we like the poem. In a nutshell, the process is Read, Interpret, Evaluate.
  • We'll start with two readings of the poem aloud, the first by a class member, the second by the poet. 

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  • Discussion will be started by the class member whose name appears next on the class list, and should be based on the notes made at home. Once the discussion is opened, it is everyone's responsibility to advance it.

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  • For some poems we may begin with the general and move to the specific, for some poems we may begin with details, but for all poems our intent  will be to discuss how the poem is made, how and how well it works.

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  • Our discussion has two purposes: 1) to help the poet improve this poem and/or learn something applicable to the next poem he or she writes, and 2) to advance everyone's understanding of what poems are, how poems are made, what works and what doesn't.
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