| ENGLISH
397 :001 |
POETRY WORKSHOP Monday 4:30-7:10 ~ Robinson A-245 SUSAN TICHY / SPRING 2003
Office: Robinson A-431 |
| 397 Main
|
Schedule, Weeks 13-15 In these last few weeks you will write a sonnet, turn in your second portfolio, then turn your attention to polishing a few poems you consider your best work for the semester. We'll have two discussions of the revision and writing process, and two sessions of small group workshop. Read each other's poems at home and come prepared to use your workshop time efficiently, so you all can have two more poems discusssed. On the last day we'll swap poems and read to each other. Week 13: April 21: Revision Portfolio #2 Due at Start of Class Week 14: April 28: Revision Revisited Abbreviations used:
Week 13: April 21: Revision Revisited Portfolio #2 Due at Start of Class Guidelines Reading: PC: The Energy of Revision Revision handouts:
Writing: A Sonnet : either Shakespearean (English) or
Petrarchan (Italian) Work on revising poems for your portfolio & doublecheck that you have all requirements. Guidelines E-Mail: Send a poem to your small group: either a revised poem or a poem you want to revise that has not yet been workshopped. In Class: We'll discuss the processes of revision, then workshop in small groups. Week 14: April 28: Revision Revisited Reading: Reread CP: Energy of Revision Writing: Revise two poems you started this semester.
E-Mail: Send a revised poem to your small group & to me. Bring to class: Notes on your own writing process. In Class: We'll discuss writing process & revision, then
workshop in small groups. Week 15: May 4: Readings Portfolio #3 due at start of class Bring to class: Your final portfolio for me. In Class: Each of you will read two or three poems you've written this semester. Practice at home! |
| Some Notes on Revision: 1. What is your central emotion or idea? Are you presenting it by telling a story? presenting images? creating a voice not quite your own? 2. Are you creating an experience for the reader? 3. Are your images concrete, your verbs active? Have you weeded out those #*%&! abstractions? 4. Which is stronger in the poem, the voice of the speaker or the images the speaker puts before us? Generally, one will predominate. Recognizing this can help you revise. Changing this factor can change the poem dramatically. 5. Is there a place the poem gets wordy? Can this spot be made more concise with a meataphor? How about a metaphoric verb? What if you simply cut some lines and let the reader jump across a gap of association? 6. Can you use sound-play (rhyme, assonance, consonance, alliteration) to intensify or change the feeling of the poem? If the sound seems inappropriate in some part of the poem, try recasting it using different vowel sounds or different kinds of consonants. When rhyming, try to place the most interesting rhyme word after its duller mate. "Interesting" may have something to do with the word itself, or with an element of surprise in context. 7. Scan your poem for stressed syllables, even if it's a free-verse poem. Do you have a rhythm that's doing some work for you? Any palce you find a lot of unstressed syllables coming together, or a long line with only a couple of strong stresses, you may be on the verge of trailing off into prose. 8. Examine your sentences. Are they complete? grammatically parallel? If left in fragements, do they make sense? Can a reader progress through the poem without too much impediment -- or, with meaningful impediments? 9. Can several short sentences or fragments be revised into a single sentence? 10. Look at your sentences in relation to your line breaks. What kinds of lines are you using? Run on? End-stopped? Are you using caesurae within the lines for rhythmic control? Try recasting your poem in very different kinds of lines. 11. Tighten or loosen the form. Tightening it into meter or a stanza pattern can help locate the flabby spots. I sometimes go through a middle stage witha poem when I try to put it in a tight form, or at least a fixed pattern of my own devising. Most of the tiem I later abandon that and go back to free verse, but the time the poem spent in close-order drill keeps it precise later on. Conversely, in a highly formal poem, loosening the form can help you avoid awkward rhymes and padded lines. A looser draft may help you get some essential stuff down on the page -- possibly for later revision bakc into strict form. 12. If, in class discussion (or my comments) part or all of the poem seemed much more meaningful to you thanto others, it is probably still too "private" -- meaning that the reader can't get to the experience you had or the meaning you had in mind. Concentrate on making that experience accessible to us. You may have to start by adding some explanation, then paring down or recasting the "explanation" into images, narrative, irony. 13. Try free-associating off the parts of the poem that you like. Associate in images and also in similar sounds. 14. If the poem just isn't getting there, try starting over with the same idea but a very different opening line--different tone, different sound, maybe different length. See where it takes you. |
|