Advanced Poetry Course Criteria

Course Description:


This semester course is for senior Creative Writing students interested in studying the craft of poetry and writing original poetry. An open mind and supportive attitude will be essential as we workshop student poems. We will be exploring several approaches to the art of writing poetry through a variety of different exercises to generate poems in open and closed forms. Students will publish their best work in a class-produced senior literary publication (Lambent) and the yearbook. Other projects include recording our own spoken-word poetry CD, participating in Poetry Out Loud, researching a modern-day poet and briefly presenting his/her poetry to the class. Students will organize their best original work into a final portfolio project, and as a class, we will seek contest and other publication opportunities.


One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn't know was in you, or in the world.-- Jane Hirshfield


Course Focus:
This course is designed into two equal parts:
1. Poetry reading, studying, and discussion

• • your reactions to poets and their work
• • overall messages and tones of poems
• • poetic elements’ connection to poets’ purpose

2. Writing and publishing original poems

• • personal choice; individual inspiration from people, art, and the world in general; and reflection on others’ work will be used to inspire your poet’s pen
• • approaches to writing and composing / how to draft then write poems
• • different poetic formats and layouts, as well as lining and titling poems
• • work-shop approach to writing poems: drafting, revising, peer-editing,
• teacher/student conference time, and then sharing

Major Sections of the Course:

• • Daily writing time
• • End of week read-arounds: students share their own polished, original work
• • Weekly time to peruse poems and poets of your own choice from any era, classical to modern
• • Weekly assignments relating to the poet’s craft and literary techniques
• • Weekly work within a writing workshop group for peer feedback, support, revision, and editing
• • Conference time with teacher to get feedback on poems and projects in progress
• • Handouts pertinent to the course of study

Major Assignments:

• • Writing of two to five original, polished poems every two weeks
• • Sincere writing workshop participation
• • Preparation for class discussion of poems
• • Modern Poet Presentation
•  Spoken Word CD Project
• • Final Portfolio Project

Course Outline (subject to changes and tweaks ☺):

Key Concepts:

• • Why poetry?
• • When and how poems resonate
• • Guidelines for reading poems
• • Finding topics and suggestions—Poem Ideas List
• • Models for approaching writing
• • Writing Territories
• • Lining and titling
• • Format and layout; rhythm and rhyme; free and blank verse;
• • Poetic elements
• • TPCASTT
• • How to choose a workshop group
• • How to be an effective workshop participant

Weekly units (based on Kevin Clark’s The Mind’s Eye):

• Unit 1 Words That Paint, Colors That Speak
• Unit 2 The Lively Image vs. The Deadly Cliché
• Unit 3 The Sound of Contemporary Poetry
• Unit 4 Conflict and Transformation
• Unit 5 Do Poems Have Plot?
• Unit 6 Empathy and Creativity
• Unit 7 Leaping Through Time and Space
• Unit 8 Frames and Forms
• Unit 9 Stanzas, Prose, and the Field of the Page
• Unit 10 Surrealism
• Unit 11 Writing About Sadness
• Unit 12 Poetry and Eros
• Unit 13 The Poetry of Witness
• Unit 14 Stretching the Imagination
• Unit 15 Breaking the Rules, Nurturing the Weird

End of semester—Focus on class anthology, final portfolios, and spoken poetry CD recording

• EXAM PORTFOLIO=25% of final MP grade