Syllabus: Advanced Poetry Workshop
12 core techniques plus dozens of authors
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Below is the poetry syllabus I have used, with some slights variations for the last two semesters for an undergraduate advanced poetry workshop I teach regularly at Rutgers University. The twelve key concepts that each reading list is built around are: Spacing, Words, Images, Collage, Patterning, Rhyme, Voice, Stanza, Allusion, Punctuation, Myth, Translation.
Each of these units are designed to not only demonstrate a core aspect of lyric and experimental poetics, but offer a wide range of examples from various lineages, both American and non-American. You’ll see most weeks I have included some essay, sometimes by a theorist or poet, that I think speaks to that concept.
The question I am deciding now: is it time for a change up? What poems to remove, which to add? What other units would interest new poets most?
—The Friend
Week 1: Spacing: Line & Breath