W680 25333 MANNING
Theory & Craft of Writing

2:30p – 5:30p R

TOPIC: THE POET’S TOOLBOX

AUTHORIZATION OF INSTRUCTOR REQUIRED.

This is a graduate writing course, but not a conventional workshop.
Our objective will be to articulate our considerations of form and
poetic structure.  The primary unit of poetic form is the line,
which comes in all shapes and sizes for different effects.  The line
may be free of verse, or a product of it (yes, I’m talking about
meter or no).  We’ll start with the line and move on to the various
bundles of lines—couplets, tercets, quatrains, terza rima, rime
royale, ottava rima.  Then we’ll take a stab at various poetic
forms, like sonnets, odes, and pantoums.  Our other concerns will
have to do with the rhetorical figures—image, simile, metaphor,
symbol, chiasmus, apostrophe—which advance and bend the thought of a
poem.  Some of our reading will be necessarily technical, but the
writing will be fun.