University of Southern Maine

Carol Moldaw

Carol Moldaw’s lyric novel, The Widening, is forthcoming in 2008. She is the author of four books of poetry: The Lightning Field, winner of the FIELD Poetry Prize (Oberlin College Press, 2003), Through the Window (La Alameda Press, 2001) which was also translated into Turkish and published in a bi-lingual edition (Penceredon/Through the Window, translator Nezih Onur. Istanbul : Iyi Seyler, 1998), Chalkmarks on Stone (La Alameda Press, 1998), and Taken from the River (Alef Books, 1993). A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, Moldaw's work has appeared widely in journals, including Agni, Antioch Review, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Field, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Parnassus, Threepenny Review, and Triquarterly, among others. Her poems appear in many anthologies, including: Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, fifth edition (McGraw-Hill, f2005), Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (Four Way Books, (2005), In Company: New Mexico Poets After 1960 (UNM Press, 2004), Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation (Etruscan Press, 2004), Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City (Milkweed Editions, 2000), New Mexico Poetry Renaissance (Red Crane, 1994), and Under 35: A New Generation of American Poets (Anchor/Doubleday, 1989). Moldaw was born in Oakland, California and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has conducted residences at the Vermont Studio Center, taught at the College of Santa Fe and in the MFA Program at Naropa University, and lives in Pojoaque, New Mexico, with her husband and daughter.

Teaching Philosophy:

As I mentor, I enjoy the process of reading student work closely and seeing poems through multiple drafts. I think it is important to identify what a poem is trying to achieve and to work toward that. Poems are mysterious constructs that cannot (should not) be pre-determined: we need to follow the clues given to us. I believe that the process of working and reworking the language, of shaping it, is one of our greatest tools for revealing these clues and coming to an understanding of the poem and of ourselves. I concentrate on diction, imagery, metaphor, the network of sounds, pacing, lineation, stanza shape, and overall structure. The sound of a poem and its clarity (not necessarily rational clarity, but clarity of imagery) are important to me. Most of my comments are contained within a detailed letter; I also make some markings on the poems. My comments range from line edits to more contextual and overarching aesthetic concerns.  I prefer hardcopies of the poems be sent to me through the mail, but I am happy to email my letter as well as send it back with the poems. I also use email for between-packet questions, logistical arrangements and clarifications. I am open to an occasional phone conversation when necessary, but not audiotape.

I don’t use a program of exercises, but assign some—from prosodic exercises to imaginative ‘diving boards’—when appropriate. I do think students should learn to generate their own ideas.

I am primarily interested in the lyric; in the balancing of lyric, meditative, and narrative modes; in poetic sequences; and formal innovation.

For the annotations, I work with students to develop the ability to read poems closely, as a poet. This means, being able to discern and discuss how a poem is structured, how it works on a formal level, where it surprises us, what it is doing. I encourage students to relate their reading to their own work; to use other poets to find their own voices and aesthetic direction.

The most important gift I can impart as a teacher is tools for a student to continue to develop as a writer on his or her own, without me. I hope to inspire and challenge my students. You receive from each other. What can and can’t be taught remains an open question; sometimes a teacher is simply a catalyst.

Links :

www.oberlin.edu

Read about Carol Moldaw's book, The Lightening Field.

^top

Related Links:

Creative Nonfiction Faculty

Fiction Faculty

Poetry Faculty

Popular Fiction Faculty