[an error occurred while processing this directive]
EN 279: INTRODUCTORY POETRY WORKSHOP
M-W--- 1:00- 2:15 pm Lovejoy 102

Peter Harris Fall 2002
Office Hrs: (ML228) Office phone: 3294
T, Th: 1:15-4:00 & by appt. Home Phone: 873-5587
Office: Miller 228 pbharris@colby.edu
Texts: Al Poulin, Jr., Contemporary American Poetry, 6th Edition
Steve Kowit, In the Palm of Your Hand
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Course Description
II. Calendar of assignments
III. Craft checklist
Welcome to 279! This class runs as a workshop. The aim is to help you learn how better to write poetry, by focusing on craft. You'll also be reading poetry as well as talking about it and writing analyses of professional poets from the perspective of a practicing writer. But the central focus of the course is on writing poems and exercises, and on giving and receiving feedback from others in the workshop. Thus, the learning process in a workshop is tied not just to the writing but also to our mutual commitment to improving one another's work.

1. Such a commitment entails your wholehearted, whole-minded, precisely informed participation in class discussion of the poems. Attendance is, thus, required. Just as others owe it to you, you owe it to others to be there to help them with their poems.

2. To be helpful, it is important to read all the week's poems--ahead of time, carefully. We will be working as a community of writers. Therefore, we all have the right to expect others to have genuine familiarity with our work. The quality of your participation will be a significant factor in the final grade.

3. Beyond general familiarity with all the poems on the worksheets, you will be specifically responsible for discussing the poem directly below yours in each week's edition. That discussion should be informed by your application of the Checklist on Craft to the poem at hand.

4. It is, therefore, essential that you make a commitment to:
     A. come to each class (one absence permitted);
     B. turn in your work every week, on time.


On Mondays, before discussing your poems, we will first focus on poems in CAP, the Poulin anthology, which highlight a specific craft issue. Wednesdays will usually be devoted to workshop discussion of your poem, though we will also do some in-class writing.


[an error occurred while processing this directive]