English 212: Graduate Poetry Workshop

ENGLISH 212: GRADUATE POETRY WORKSHOP

Instructor: Matthew Zapruder

Email:

Phone: x 8131

Office Hours: Thursday1-3pm or by appointment, Dante 319N

Note: Please sign up for office hours on the list posted on my office door. I cannot make appointments or changes to appointments by email. Also, I appreciate you making every effort to meet with me during my designated office hours. However, if you are unable to meet with me during the time above, please let me know, and I will gladly make other arrangements.

Course Description

Many of the choices we make as poets are, as they should be, instinctive, and justified by intuition and feeling. Once the poem is on the page, however, it can be productively considered as a set of decisions, choices, and effects (whether conscious or not) that together create an artistic act, a poem.

William Carlos Williams called the poem"a small or large machine made of words." While this may seem cold or mechanical, it can also be a useful way to step back from our own work, and to think about how exactly our machines are built and designed, as well as the great mystery of what ultimately our various machines are designed to produce.

Another quote: Simone Weil famously wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. In this workshop, we will seriously and closely attend to the machines made of words we and our peers have made. Our goal will be to reflect back to each other the effects on us as readers of the myriad poetic decisions, conscious and otherwise, that make up our poems.

In this course we will consider various choices and effects typical of the poetic process, such as titles, beginnings, metaphor/imagery, form, line breaks, syntax, closure, and many others, in order to learn more about the effects of our current, and potential, choices in our poems on readers. We will also consider the sorts of larger concepts (such as duende, negative capability, ambiguity, meaning, creativity, imagination, audience, responsibility) that can help us see what effects our poems might be having on readers.

Our focus will be on close reading the poetry of our peers, and when necessary and helpful, reading the poetry of the past that can help us understand how we might move forward.Students will write at least one poem per week, and engage in thorough and significant revision over the course of the semester. Though we won't be able to read all of these poems in class, at the end of the semester students will turn in a portfolio composed of 15 new poems, as well as revisions. Evaluation of course performance will be based on the completion of that portfolio, as well as class participation.

Each student should schedule two half hour meetings with me during the course of the semester, the first before fall break (the week of October 21st), and one after. Please sign up for these appointments on my office door. Again, if you are unable to be at office hours during the designated time, let me know and we’ll find a different time.

ENGLISH 212: GRADUATE POETRY WORKSHOP

Zapruder

Learning Outcomes

Students in this course will:

•write at least one poem a week

• develop skills of discussing and analyzing poetry through participation in class discussions;

•closely read and discuss notable previously published individual poems, in order to think about what we might learn and make use of in our own poems;

• gain insight into more and less successful techniques in your own poems

•learn to revise poems based on responses of your peers and your instructor

•compose a final portfolio of new poems, and revised versions of those poems

Grades and Other Information

All grades for Saint Mary’s MFA Creative Writing students are Pass / Fail unless a student requests otherwise. The student who misses four or more class sessions for whatever reason will likely not receive credit. (Arriving more than 10 minutes late to class, disappearing for extended periods during class, or leaving more than 10 minutes early translates into an absence.) Also in jeopardy of failing the course is the student who fails to participate in the discussions on a weekly basis. If there any emergencies or special circumstances please let me know before you miss class, or as soon as possible afterward. Also, you are responsible for keeping up with the reading and any other assignments, so if you are unable to attend class please contact me or another student as soon as possible to find out what you have missed.

Saint Mary’s College expects every member of its community to abide by the Academic Honor Code.According to the Code, “Academic dishonesty is a serious violation of College policy because, among other things, it undermines the bonds of trust and honesty between members of the community.”Violations of the Code include but are not limited to acts of plagiarism.For more information, please consult theStudent Handbookat

Student Disability Services extends reasonable and appropriate accommodations that take into account the context of the course and its essential elements for individuals with qualifying disabilities. Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact the Student Disability Services Office at (925) 631-4358 or to arrange a confidential appointment to discuss accommodation guidelines and available services. Additional information regarding the services available may be found at the following address on the Saint Mary’s website:
INITIAL RUBRIC

The idea of coming up with a rubric for poetry has always interested me. The questions and considerations below are an experiment, based on my experience in workshop of what sorts of things are productive to think and talk when we see and read a new poem. They are designed to get us thinking about poems. Please compose a short written response to the initial poems we will workshop. This is not an evaluative document, but an observational response.

A rubric is a set of considerations or standards that a group of people can use to approach something that is not easily quantifiable, like a piece of writing for instance. It is designed to articulate common concerns: otherwise, people can easily end up having formless, pointless conversations in which the true bases for opinions and evaluations are never made clear. Even if the rubric is ultimately discarded or found limiting, it is a useful place to begin a discussion.

Please think about the answers to some, a few, or none of the questions below (you do not need to produce these answers in writing, though notes for each poem would be helpful for you in class, as well as welcome for the writer). Also feel free to substitute in other questions and considerations you find more relevant or useful: if you do, please clearly indicate what those questions and considerations are. The answers to these questions are, of course, completely subjective: there is no right answer to any of them. They are, again, just interesting initial places of discussion.

• who (if anyone) is speaking?

•what is the situation/location of the poem?

•describe the significance and function of the title and first line

•what is this poem for?

•what does this poem do?

• what (or who) does this poem change? How?

•what changes in this poem?

• what is the center of energy of the poem? Is there a particular line, or word, that seems to be the center of energy?

•what is most troubling and unfamiliar about this poem?

•what is the most "beautiful" moment of the poem? Why?

• what is the most intellectual moment of the poem?

•who, if anyone, seems to be poetic spirit guide or predecessor of this poem?

•is there fear in this poem? If so, what is it of?

•how does the poem end? Why?

• what does the poem want you to think about?