|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Baron Wormser
Baron Wormser (Nonfiction, Poetry) is the author of seven books of poetry: The White Words (Houghton Mifflin); Good Trembling (Houghton Mifflin); Atoms, Soul Music and Other Poems (Paris Review Editions); When (Sarabande Books); Mulroney and Others (Sarabande Books); Subject Matter (Sarabande Books); and Carthage (The Illuminated Sea Press). He is also the co-author of two books about teaching poetry: Teaching the Art of Poetry: The Moves (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) and A Surge of Language: Teaching Poetry Day by Day (Heinemann). Baron's poems and nonfiction have appeared in a wide variety of journals including The Paris Review, The New Republic, Harper's, and Poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Baron is the director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching and the Frost Place Seminar at the Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire. In 2000 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the State of Maine. Selected Publications: Subject Matter: Poems (Sarabande Books, 2004) A Surge of Language: Teaching Poetry Day by Day (with Dave Capella, Heinemann, 2004) Teaching Philosophy: I'm interested in trying to get my students to consider what any given poem might be, so my teaching focuses a lot on trying to make students aware of what their options are. Students tend to close poems off too soon. I see it as my task to help them realize this and take the poem further. This applies most importantly to endings that don't, in my estimation, take the measure of what has been created up to that point. So there is a lot of scrutiny of how the poem can proceed in regards to subject matter and form—how the material at hand has been developed (or not developed). I focus on individual word choices but I don't mark up poems heavily. Because I like to keep the discussion open as to where the poem might go, I don't want to have the student focus prematurely on this or that word. If my students come away from a semester of work with an expanded sense of what their poems can be and how those poems can work, I'm pleased. I prefer to do the packets by mail as attachments seem to present problems and poems are often wrongly lineated. I also like to talk at least once during the semester on the phone. In the third and fourth semesters particularly, I do more talking on the phone to stay in touch with the progress of the critical thesis and to do intensive work on the creative thesis. In regards to third semester work, I am particularly interested in projects that focus on poetry and pedagogy since I have co-authored two books in that area and work in schools with students and teachers. I'm glad to work with people who are interested in free verse and/or meter. Since as a poet I myself am wedded to the line, I don't have an abiding interest in the prose poem. Topics for annotations are wide open and I don't work from a list. I like to tailor them individually for each student as the semester proceeds. Students have annotated a wide variety of contemporary and classic poets. I like to have students do at least one poet a semester who is part of what once was defined as the tradition. I definitely want my students to approach poetry as an art with a past with which they should be intimately acquainted. At the same time, I encourage individual response; I want students to articulate what moves them, what doesn't and why. Along those lines I want students to read in books about the art of poetry so that they feel comfortable in writing about the art. It takes time for students to get up to speed in writing about poetry in ways that suit an MFA student and I understand that. I know from many years of teaching that the rudiments and even the fine points of the art can be taught. ^top
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||
