This is a course in meter and poetic form.  At the beginning of the
semester you’ll learn how to measure lines of verse, and will
practice writing poems in blank verse, tetrameter and trimeter.  Then
we’ll turn to the villanelle, the sonnet, the ballad, the heroic
couplet, the sestina, and the pantoum.  We’ll also look at various
stanza forms, and consider traditional shaping forms such as the ode,
the pastoral, and the elegy.  Class time will alternate between
discussion of model poems from the anthology, and workshop sessions
on poems written by students.  Class work will consist of exercises,
poems and oral presentations.

Text:  The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms
edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland