The Craft of Poetry: The Prose Poem

3 units

This course is for writers who wish to study long-form poetic composition and book arrangement. The major assignment will be to compose a poem or poetic sequence of considerable length. Gwendolyn Brooks (The Anniad) and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (Dictee) will be chief among our guides. We will study how poets arrange their books, and we will also make a brief foray into the material history of the book. Texts by Rosa Alcalá, John Ashbery, Daniel Borzutzky, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Lorine Niedecker, Alice Notley, George Oppen, Ed Roberson, Brian Teare, and Simone White will also be included. This course counts toward the creative writing concentration. Prerequisite: L13 322.