Reading and Writing Poetry (206-CN-14)
Instructors
Sarah Fay
Dr. Fay’s writing appears in The New York Times, TIME, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Bookforum, The American Scholar, BOMB, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, The Believer, and The Paris Review, where she served as an advisory editor. She is the recipient of the Hopwood Award for Literature, as well as grants and fellowships from Yaddo, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Book Arts, the Poetry Center of Chicago, the Puffin Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in English, and a Ph.D. in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American Literature. She currently teaches in the English departments at DePaul University and Northwestern University.
Meeting Info
Online: Tues 6:15PM - 9:15PM
Overview of class
This course is about making poetry come alive. In it, you'll read old masters and new voices: Sappho, haiku and tanka poets, Izumi Shikibu, William Shakespeare, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, Frank O'Hara, Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Gary Soto, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Carl Phillips, Hanif Abdurraqib, Miguel Algarín, Suheir Hammad, and so many more. You'll learn about various movements of poetry, including Ancient Greek poetry and the lyric tradition, Elizabethan poetry, the Metaphysical poets, the Romantic poets, the American Transcendentalists, imagism/Modernism, the Harlem Renaissance poets, Surrealism, confessional poetry, the New York School, magical realism, Language poetry, performance poetry, and Flarf (that's neither a typo nor a judgment).
In your reading and writing, you'll study craft elements—e.g., imagery, figurative language, lineation, voice, style, meter and form, rhyme, repetition—and experiment with those elements, or tools, in your work via in-class prompts and weekly writing assignments. You'll push yourself as both a reader and a writer to inquire further into the art form than you have thus far. The readings and assignments will help you do that by exposing you to the different formal, tonal, thematic, and textual elements in poetry. Revision, of course, will be a focus. Types of instruction include lecture, discussion, writing labs, and workshops.
Intended for students with little or no formal training in the elements of writing poetry, this course combines both seminar and workshop methods and includes extensive reading of poetry. Students use analytical skills presented in the course to critique each other's drafts of poems written during the quarter.
Registration Requirements
Advanced composition course or equivalent writing experience strongly recommended.
May not be audited or taken P/N.
Learning Objectives
• understand the differences between traditional and free verse poems;
• identify key literary devices;
• use a precise vocabulary to analyze the works of published authors;
• practice seminar and workshop behavior, including class discussion, active listening, and participation;
• offer verbal and written feedback of students' writing in workshops;
• practice independent intellectual and creative inquiry; and
• demonstrate a working knowledge of the writing process
Teaching Method
Discussion
Presentations
Writing assignments
Class participation
Readings
Seminar
In-class critique
Written critique
Evaluation Method
• Attendance, preparation, and participation
• Reading summaries, discussion questions, and responses
• Presentation and small-group discussion
• Weekly writing assignments
• Attendance at poetry events and reflections
• Workshop submission(s)
• Final portfolio and introduction
Class Materials (Required)
Assigned readings will be available on Canvas or online.
Texts may include one collection of poetry available online and at the NU bookstore
Class Attributes
Synchronous:Class meets remotely at scheduled time