English 609: Poetry Writing

What's due today:

• Portfolios discussion
• Pantoums and Villanelles
• Exercise: Narrative into poem

  Speech Acts: the manner of expression (as opposed to the content). Examples of speech acts include: question, promise, plea, declaration, prayer, offer, warning, advice, call, chant, oath, thank, apologize, and command. Others: deictics: "Over here!" "See you soon."

  • Louise Gluck: annotated
  • W.S. Merwin,analyzed
  • Strand's poem and Dickens' novel
  • Example 1: Young
  • Example 2: Lux
  • Example 3: Collins
  • Example 4: Millay
• workshop

What's due next class:

sonic level: sonnets and fourteeners, including nonce sonnets

• Sonnet
  • Herbert, Prayer
  • Keats, Bright Star
  • Meredith, Modern Love--16-line-sonnet sequence (don't read it all)
  • Frost, Design
  • Jarman, Four sonnets
  • Kees, For my Daughter (also in Anthology)
  • Bruce Smith, (a fourteener)
• Triolet (an explanation) (and another with examples by McPherson, Gioia, and others) Note: this form attracts people who think they are Irish
  • Hardy, Birds at Winter Nightfall and The Coquette, and After (uses Triolet stanza)
  • Cullen, For a Poet
  • Cornford, To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train
  • Teasdale, Four Triolets
  • Sandra McPherson, Triolet
  • Triolets for the masses:
    • A bunch of Triolets by MIT students about computing

HomeworK: Write one of the following: pantoum, villanelle, terzanelle, triolet, or sonnet; steal from a narrative, or choose another topic