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Sample Residency Presentations in Poetry Stonecoast offers a uniquely rich residency curriculum of classes, panels, lectures, presentations and discussions, presented by Stonecoast faculty along with selected alumni, current students, and visiting writers. Presentations relate to all aspects of creative writing, from expert publishing advice to detailed explorations of the writing craft. from literary analysis to punctuation, from writing about race and class to balancing writing and family. Some presentations are cross-genre in nature, while others are specific to one genre. Here are some recent presentations focusing on issues in poetry.
The Place of Poetry Annie Finch and Baron Wormser This presentation will focus on two key books about the place of poetry: The Gift by Lewis Hyde and The Song of the Earth by Jonathan Bate (both available in paperback). These books examine how poetry has functioned in various societies (primal and modern) and what role poets may legitimately embody. Discussion will focus on Hyde’s notion of a poem as a spirit gift and Bate’s notion of poetry as a form of dwelling on earth—literally the song of the earth. Also we will consider what the two books have in common and what the implications are for poets. The intention here is to consider the largest issues that govern the practice of poetry. Required Reading: Lewis Hyde, The Gift Jonathan Bate, The Song of the Earth
The Art of Lucille Clifton Kazim Ali Clifton is one of the major poetic voices and influences on young poets. This seminar will look at a range of her work, discussing poetic and spiritual influences, Clifton's technique and use of persona, issues of craft and prosody as well as her approaches to history and political commentary in her work. Required Reading: Lucille Clifton, “Good Times” and “Generations,” reprinted in Good Woman, Boa Editions, 1987 Lucille Clifton, The Book of Light . In a Sentimental Mood (a discussion class)
Revisiting the Villanelle: Faculty Panel
Jeffrey Harrison In this seminar we will examine the pleasures, strengths, and limitations of description in poetry. We will look at different kinds of description--from a thick linguistic pigment to a lighter, sketchier technique, from earthy and elemental to more social and psychological--in the work of Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, James Schuyler, and John Clare. When is a mostly descriptive poem successful, and when is it not sufficient? What does it need to do to become more than just description? Can an elegy, for instance, actually be an elegy if it is largely descriptive? We will address these and other questions. Required Reading: Seamus Heaney: “Blackberry-Picking,” “Perch” (secondary: “Death of a Naturalist," etc.) Elizabeth Bishop: “The Bight,” “The Moose,” “North Haven” (secondary: “The Fish,” “At the Fishhouses,” “Cape Breton,” “Santarem”) James Schuyler: “February,” “Dec. 18, 1974,” “Buried at Springs” (secondary: other Schuyler) John Clare: his sonnets (probably secondary)
Isolation and Public Space: Political Poetry in the United States (C) Baron Wormser This class will look at some poems that engage political dimensions of American life. The poems variously consider how public space underlies the strengths and shortcomings of the American polity. We will look at how the poems go beyond the self as an end-all and be-all of poetry and engage the public domain. Required Reading: Robert Lowell, “For the Union Dead” Audre Lorde, “Afterimages” Amy Clampitt, “The Dahlia Gardens” William Matthews,“President Reagan’s Visit to New York, October 1984” Baron Wormser, “Robert Lowell’s ‘For the Union Dead’ and ‘Political Poetry” (essay) The Manhattan Review, October 2006 and available online
The Art of the List Poem: Lists, Inventories, Catalogues, and other Accumulations (C) Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Jeffrey Harrison, Carol Moldaw Listing as a technique has been in use since the earliest forms of poetry. We find lists in chants, praise poems, poems of instruction, naming, spells, riddles and creeds among texts from the oral tradition. Lists can be used to collect, organize/order, commemorate, and narrate experiences and information. In List Poems we find everything from grand amassments of sensation and observation (as in Whitman) to casual inventories of daily experience (as in the New York school poets) to sheer delight in language play (eg, Harryette Mullen). List poems may be in traditional forms (sonnets, abecedarians) or open-ended ones. The List Poem presents certain challenges with regard to sequencing, pacing, and closure. What comes next? What is “enough”? How do they create an artistic unity among their parts? The panel will look at examples to illustrate the variety of possibilities for the List Poem and try some writing on the spot. The uses of the List form in teaching will also be addressed, as lists are a great way to introduce poetry to young writers. Required Reading: Larry Fagin, The List Poem (Teachers & Writers, 1991) Suggested Reading: Joe Brainard, I Remember (Granary Books) Denise Duhamel, Mille et un sentiments (Firewheel Editions) Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” Harryette Mullen, Sleeping with the Dictionary (selections) Mark Strand, Chicken, Shadow, Moon & More (Turtle Point Press) Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” A handout of list poems to be discussed will be available.
Basic Elements Lisa Jarnot This seminar will focus on the basic building blocks of the poem, beginning with vowels, consonants, and syllable clusters, and evolving toward an evaluation of the larger metrical structures inherent in poetry. Working from Louis Zukofsky's idea that poetry can be evaluated within the range of “Lower level speech, upper level music”, we'll explore ways to locate the musicality of different kinds of poetry. From classic beats ofiambs, trochees, anapests, and dactyls, to the "field poetics" of contemporary experimental schools of writing, we'll look at the range of possibilities for the line. In addition to making use of The New Book of Form, we'll become familiar with poems that show diverse relations to musicality and rhythm.
The Persona in Poetry Shara McCallum
The seminar will be conducted with emphasis on discussion from all present. As such, it will be helpful for participants to have read from the works listed below ahead of time and to come with observations, questions, and comments to share. I will also provide handouts during the seminar.
“Leda” from The Book of Light by Lucille Clifton, Excerpts from The Wild Iris by Louise Gluck, Excerpts from “Brutal Imagination” in the book of the same name by Cornelius Eady
The Poem's Argument Jeffrey Harrison This seminar will examine the way argument and statement work in a number of poems, concentrating not on large and salient statements like "Death is the mother of beauty" but, instead, on the way the language of statement can weave through a poem in intermittent phrases and passages. Such language, because it is usually less visible than imagery, often takes a back seat in discussions of poetry. But the argument of a poem and the small adjustments in the language of statement often provide the poem's structure, as well as the speaker's stance on the material, which is to say the tone. Therefore, the clarity and success of a poem depends as much on getting the argument right as it does on the precision of its imagery or description. Required Reading: Walt Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" Frank X. Gaspar, "I See Men but They Look like Trees Walking" Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" John Clare, "Emmonsails Heath in Winter"
Shark And Shoe: An Ersatz Look at Non-Western Forms Dennis Nurkse
“Ear”-Training Made Simple Annie Finch Everyone says a good poet needs to have an “ear.” In order to write poetry eloquently or simply to appreciate poetry, we need to train our internal ears. This experiential, interactive class will focus on how to “hear” some of the many possible meters of poetry (our own and others’) by making use of our own corresponding internal rhythms. We will explore a variety of meters from trochees to hendecasyllabics, on the page and in performance, but don’t let the names fool you: these are not academic rhythms, but can give pleasure to anyone. This class is appropriate for rank beginners in meter, and will also include some doozies to stump the experts. A handout of poems is available by email ahead of class from afinch@usm.maine.edu. Students will get the most out of the 90 minutes if they obtain the handout and to their best to scan the poems (in pencil) before class. Some copies of the handout will be available in class.
The Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali Shara McCallum This class will consider Agha Shahid Ali’s mark on contemporary American poetry through a discussion of his penultimate book, The Country Without a Post Office/ We will also look at the ghazal and Ali’s interest in the form (as translator, practitioner, and historian/critic/editor). Participants in the class need to have read the above-mentioned volume of his verse as well as Ali’s introduction to Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English. It would also be helpful, though not required, to be familiar with the larger body of Ali’s work. I will leave time at the end of the class for us to each attempt a ghazal—so come ready to write as well as talk.
Writing, Rewriting & Re-Creating the Family Crystal Williams The Family is perhaps one of the richest, most nebulous and traversed terrains we find in contemporary poetry. But there are real challenges which arise when writing about the family: to whom and for whom are we writing? How do we write poems that are "honest" without offending the very people we're writing about? Should we care if we offend the people about whom we are writing? How does identity get formed by writing about the family? How can we write expansive family-based poems, poems that speak to the common human experience and not just our own familial experience? I hope to spend the bulk of our time discussing student questions related to writing, rewriting and recreating the family.
The Art of the Short Poetry Review Carol Moldaw We all bemoan the lack of attention poetry receives in the wider culture, and decry its isolation as an art form. Who better than poets to initiate the conversation? At least as important as bringing poetry into greater public view, reviewing books of poetry is a way to engage in a dialogue with the works one is reading: it can help us read with greater discernment, as we are pushed to articulate the poetic context being worked in, and what is gold, what dross, in a given book. In this seminar we will look at reviews by the distinguished practitioners Randall Jarrell and Louise Bogan, as well as a few examples by contemporary poet/reviewers. With Jarrell and Bogan as models, we will concentrate on what can be accomplished in a 300-750 word review, but also discuss some nuts and bolts: Should reviewers describe, or prescribe? Do reviews need to be accolades? Is there a place for the negative review? How does one negotiate the intimate world of poetry? The last portion of the seminar will be devoted to putting into practice what we have learned: each participant should bring a volume of poetry he/she has read at least twice and remains engaged by, and be prepared to draft a review. I will have available, through e-mail, a packet of short reviews by Randall Jarrell, Louise Bogan, Miriam Sagan, myself, and others. These should be read and thought about beforehand. Also required: bring one volume (no collecteds or selecteds) by any living poet that you have read and re-read with sustained interest and would like to write about.
Bring samples of (short, 300-750 word) reviews that strike you as stylistically delightful, wonderfully informative or provocative, woefully biased, or unforgivably crabby, to share.
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