Zawacki, Andrew
R 9:35 AM
Park Hall 136
Dirty Dozen
Half poetry and poetics seminar and half writing workshop, this course will investigate a different form, mode, or genre each week. Our dirty dozen will likely include the sonnet, sestina, pantoum and villanelle, ghazal, prose poem, abecedarium, the ekphrastic poem, the elegy, ode, tanka, and cento. We will study the late Danish poet Inger Christensen's marvelous project alphabet, to experiment with writing according to the Fibonacci sequence. After spring break, the class will welcome visiting poet Leah Nieboer, who will help us to think about poetry as a species of listening. While featuring an imaginative, artistic component, as students draft their own weekly exercises before critiquing them in small groups, the course will be a deep dive into the structures and histories of English and American verse. To that end, we will take apart many exemplary poems, like opening up a watch to figure out how its machinery keeps the time. Consequently, though not a mathematics group, students enrolled in this class should be prepared to do a lot of counting—of lines, words, syllables, accents, feet. Students will pair up and rotate to introduce each week's topic. There will be a weekly poetry writing exercise. At close, each student will submit a final portfolio of revised creative exercises, along with a substantial critical essay.