Modes in Poetry: Rants, Yarns, Musings. (A writing workshop)

My poetry workshop at Writers & Books will look at different ways poets arrange language to have varying effects on the reader.

One reason it’s hard to say what a poem is or isn’t is that there are so many ways a poem can be made. Long lines, short lines, paragraphs, collage. Soapbox, anecdote, confession, meditation. In this class, we will explore different modes a poem may be written in depending on its “designs on the reader.”

Through discussion and written commentary, we’ll look at how a variety of poets, from John Keats to John Berryman, Emily Dickinson to W.S. DiPiero, Larry Eigner to Larry Levis (to name a few) use different modes for differing effects. Class participants will learn the practice of “descriptive analysis” — brief commentary on a specific aspect of one poem (such as the use of sound, color, or sudden turns in plot, diction, or tone) and how its deployment can create and alter emotion and mind.

Consider the quieting effect of the last image in Keats’ “To Autumn” with the creepy beauty of Berryman’s “Dream Song 29.” Subject matter aside, what is it that accounts for the difference in tone and final effect?

Just by engaging in descriptive analysis, the techniques reviewed effortlessly enter the writer’s own repertoire of strategies, expanding and enriching our writing.

As participants generate new poems, we’ll discuss how they work in the same way we discuss published texts. The emphasis will be on noticing what’s there and how it’s working, rather than “fixing” other people’s poems. The final class will be a public reading.

Evening Workshop: 6 Sessions, Wednesdays
October 30 – December 4
6:30 pm – 9 pm

Deadline to register: October 27, 11:59 pm