Beginning Poetry: Listening to Lines

This intensive introductory workshop offers students the opportunity to develop their aptitude and affinity for the practice of poetry. Students follow a structured sequence of writing assignments, readings, and exercises aimed at cultivating a sound working knowledge of the fundamental principles of prosody and the evolving possibilities of poetic form. There is a special emphasis on listening to lines and saying poems aloud, in concert with an eclectic assortment of audio archives. Another principal focus is the verse line through time, as we turn for instruction and inspiration to what the critic Paul Fussell calls the "historical dimension" of poetic meter and poetic form. To investigate how these versatile techniques allow us to work and play with the renewable resources of sound and sense, we alternate constructive workshop sessions of student writing with the discussion of exemplary work by master poets of every variety, from Sappho and Horace to Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney. The collective goal is to create the conditions for reading and writing poems with a stronger sense of technical know-how and expressive conviction as well as a sustaining appreciation for the inexhaustible art of the line.