English 262: Craft of Poetry—Form, Forms and Prosody—Hillman
Thursday 4:45-8pm Dante 222 Office Hours Weds 11:30-12:30, Thurs 2-3 & by appointment
Dante 322 Please use home phone or email for messages: (510) 527-4945 bhillman@stmarys-ca.edu.
Cell: (510) 393-5719
Course Description:
This course will instruct the student in methods of scansion, prosody, received forms of metrical verse and in
some alternate forms of poetry as they impact the writing of contemporary poetry. This background is useful
and significant for the study of poetry at any level, and is especially helpful in light of the fact that free verse
technique has dominated poetry in the twentieth century. The course is meant to give the student a solid
“nuts-and-bolts” back ground in the music and prosody of poetry. We will start the semester learning the basic
techniques of scansion and will move on to study principles of some received forms—the sonnet, the villanelle,
the sestina, accentual-syllabic verse, syllabic poetry, concrete poems, prose poetry—as well as free verse poetry
in a wide-range of techniques. The student will be asked to annotate poetry and to write versions, imitations
and variations on received forms. We will study variants of the singlet, the couplet, the triplet and other
stanzaic structures. Students will be doing presentations of formal issues in a practice other than poetry.
Learning Outcomes:
 To inform the student about the basics of prosody, including critical vocabulary, and to study
examples of prosody in diverse forms
 To expose the student to a variety of received and invented forms that will enable her to incorporate
those forms into her own practice
 To give the student a familiarity with the historical and aesthetic contexts of the basic structures of
poetry
 To encourage the student to think about form in general, especially about the correspondences
between forms in other disciplines and poetic form
Texts:
Annie Finch, A Poet’s Craft (abbreviated AF)
Mary Kinzie, A Poet’s Guide to Poetry (abbreviated MK)
Robert Hass, various materials in Class Reader (abbreviated CR)
Some assignments will be made available to you at the Moodle website and some as links in this syllabus.
Bring your own books, and print out your own copy of texts for each class, including copies of your own
poems; please do not share texts, and please do not use your laptop, tablet or cell phone in class unless asked to
do so. You should allow about 3 hours for the reading for this class, plus time for the writing assignment.
Course Requirements:
Weekly participation in discussion, the production of one poem a week that follows the week’s formal
problems, as well as a weekly annotation on the reading.
Proposed Schedule:
You are allowed one absence in this class; please try not to miss class at all. All assignments are due at the start
of class. Always check with a classmate if you miss a class, or if you miss an assignment, as the
syllabus may change. You are strongly requested to attend all the readings in the Creative Writing Reading
Series as part of your work for the class.
Sept 5: Scansion; accentual-syllabics; introduction to iambic meter
—AF, pp.281-285, 290-294, 301 (mark accents on the Yeats), 306-329, 333-338
—Robert Hass, “How to Scan Poetry” (please attempt to scan the pieces he gives you) (CR)
—MK, pp. 217-225, 458-459 “Scansion rules”
—Write and bring to class 16 lines of iambic pentameter on any subject.
—Be able to scan iambic lines
—Demonstrations on daily form
Sept. 12: More on iambic meter, anapestic meters, beyond iambs
—AF, pp. 339-352, 359-69
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—MK, pp. 226-234, 359-69
—Wallace Stevens, “Sailing After Lunch”
—Robert Hass, “Listening and Making” from Twentieth Century Pleasures (CR)
—“Twas the Night Before Christmas” see http://blackdog.net/holiday/christmas/twas.html --beware the
ridiculous snowflakes on this internet site!!
—Write a short poem (12-20 lines) in which you use substitutions for iambic feet
—Demonstrations on daily form
Sept 19: Hymn meter, the quatrain, the hymn, the ballad
—AF (stanza, quatrain) pp. 447-50, 460-472; (ballad) 564-573
—Robert Hass, “Four Lines” (CR)
—MK, pp. 262-64, 267-69, 418-421
—The hymn “Amazing Grace” http://www.constitution.org/col/amazing_grace.htm
—Emily Dickinson, “I heard a Fly Buzz” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15393
—Barbara Allen lyrics http://www.lyricsdepot.com/joan-baez/barbara-allen.html. compare with
http://lyrics.astraweb.com/displayp.cgi?f=john_travolta..musical_ost..barbara_allen.
—Write 3 quatrains of a ballad or faux ballad; write two or more stanzas of unrhymed quatrains
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Sept. 26: The Sonnet
—We will have a visitor, Steven Nightingale, for the first hour of the class
—Steven Nightingale’s poems (CR)
—Shakespeare sonnets; #29, 130 http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/29,
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/130
—John Berryman’s sonnets (CR)
—AF, pp. 539-63
—MK, pp. 5-6, 349-350; 462
—Paul Fussell (CR)
—Write either a Petrachan sonnet or a Shakespearean sonnet
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Oct. 3: The couplet, the ghazal
—AF, pp. 216-17, 223-24, 455-57
—Robert Hass, “Two Lines” (CR)
—Agha Shahid Ali, “Ghazal: To Be Teased into Disunity” (CR)
—MK read pp.284-289 & do Exercises IX and X on pp. 358-60 “Epigram of Condemnation” and “Couplets in
Praise of Place” – bring one of each to class
—Attempt a short ghazal
—Demonstrations on daily form
Oct 10: Three lines, the villanelle and the pantoum
—Robert Hass, “Three Lines” + examples (CR)
—AF, pp. 497-503
—MK, Linked Form, pp. 431-432
—Vince Gotera, “The Pantoum’s Postcolonial Pedigree” (CR)
—Examples in reader (Williams, Stevens)
—Write a traditional villanelle
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Oct. 17: The Sestina
—AF, pp. 503-516
—Ezra Pound’s “Altaforte” http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15423
—Lewis Turco, “The Sestina- The End Game” (CR)
—MK, def—pp. 459-460
—Do a sestina based on the Kinzie exercise or on some other set of materials
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
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Oct. 20: SUNDAY NIGHT CLASS 4-7 pm at Brenda’s for Dinner, Prose Poetry
—Michael Delville and Maxine Chernoff, “Strange Tales and Bitter Emergencies: A Few Notes
on the Prose Poem” (CR)
—AF, pp. 417-419, 427-435 (some of this will be reviewed in Free Verse discussion)
—David Lehman’s introduction- excerpt (CR)
—See examples in the Reader (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, WH Auden, TS Eliot, ee cummings, Frank O’Hara,
Allen Ginsberg, James Merrill, Carolyn Forche, Russel Edson, Michael Palmer, Tate’s “Rapture,”
Robert Hass, Lyn Hejinian, Harryette Mullen’s “Sleeping with the Dictionary”)
—Write a prose poem
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Oct. 31: Haiku
—Amiri Baraka, “The Low Coup as a Contemporary Afro-American Verse Form” (CR)
—AF, pp. 130-133
—Robert Hass, “Note on Haikai, Hokku, Haiku” (CR)
—See examples in the Reader: Selections from Richard Wright’s Haiku: The Other World and Robert Hass’s
The Essential Haiku
—Write three or four haiku
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Nov 7: Free verse, projective verse
— MK, pp. 330-343
— AF, pp. 419-427, 429-443 (you read some of this earlier; re-read)
—Charles Olson, “Projective Verse” if you have time—at least read the opening (CR)
—Reread “Prufrock” in light of free verse
—Write a free verse poem—being aware of your principle of composition
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Nov. 14: The list, the litany, the found poem
—AF, pp. 269-275
—David Lehman, “The List Poem” (CR)
—Robert Pinsky’s “Gulf Music” (CR)
—Keith Tuma, “Beyond Found Poetry” (CR)
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Nov. 21: Procedural poetry and other exploratory forms
—AF, pp. 257-269
—Aldon Lynn Nielsen, “Oulipian Poetry” (CR)
—Jena Osman, “Procedural Poetry: The Intentions of Nonintention” (CR)
—Give yourself a poetic rule assignment Oulipian or other rules and write the poem
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Dec 5: The Blues, Hip Hop, Musical Form and Rap
—Start by reviewing/re-reading Bob Hass’s remarks on the blues in his Three-lines essay
—Rob Hardin, “Musical Form and Formalist Poetry” (CR)
—Kevin Young, “Unwrapping the Message” (CR)
—DJ Renegade, “The Metrics of Rap” (CR)
—Robert Johnson poems (CR)
—Ma Rainey poems (CR)
—Please bring an example of any rap/hip hop favorites you feel like sharing and try to write a short one
of your own.
—Demonstrations on Daily Form
Dec. 12: Performance and Shaped Poetry
—Bob Holman, “Performance Poetry” (CR)
—Kathleen Fraser poems (CR)
—Write a poem that you can easily perform or a poem in a shape
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—AF, pp. 452-54, see examples
—PARTY!
ENGLISH 262 ASSIGNMENTS
Annotations—What are these?
Please plan to bring an annotation to class each week. These will facilitate our discussions. These should be
typed responses to one part of the reading, with a special interest in a formal or poetics problem that engages
you specifically about one of the poems. These should be no fewer than 200 words in length but they can be
slightly longer if you wish (up to two pages); they can be informal (a sort of journal entry) or scholarly (that is,
you can add source material, as long as you cite it and don’t cut and paste from the internet. Annotations
should represent a small portion of the thought you have about the week’s work. These will be due at the
beginning of each class. In addition, each week you should plan to come to class with one interpretive question.
Poems for classes
Please plan to produce one poem per week based on the weekly assignments; your work will represent one of
the prosody configurations in the week’s lesson. That poem will be put up on Moodle no later than Wednesday
night. Note that special formatting may not cut and paste completely accurately from a document, but you can
edit this once you are in the Wiki tool. Please print out the class’s poems and bring them to class— no laptops
in class, please, and no “double dipping” for Workshop poetry—this “Forms” assignment is in addition to
whatever you are doing in Workshop.
Demonstrations on forms
You’ll be asked to sign up to make a 10-minute presentation of a non-literary use of form. Examples would be:
horseback riding, making éclairs, sewing on a button, snowboarding— whatever you’re good at besides writing.
An example will be presented the first day of class. Please time your presentation to be 10 -12 minutes—not
much more or less.
Readings for this class
The readings tend to be time-consuming, so even if there are only a few pages, please allow several hours to get
through the material. The class will be more fun and fruitful if we have full participation in discussion, and you
will get more from your education if you are prepared for class.
Please remember all grades for this class are Pass/Fail, so the pressure is less on the grade and more
on your own knowledge-gathering.
These two statements are provided by the College:
Saint Mary’s College expects every member of its community to abide by the Academic Honor
Code. According to the Code, “Academic dishonesty is a serious violation of College policy because,
among other things, it undermines the bonds of trust and honesty between members of the
community.” Violations of the Code include but are not limited to acts plagiarism. For more
information, please consult http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/graduate-professional-academics/graduateand-professional-student-handbook [for graduate and professional students].
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Student Disability Services extends reasonable and appropriate accommodations that take into
account the context of the course and its essential elements for individuals with qualifying disabilities.
Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact the Student Disability Services Office at (925)
631-4358 or sds@stmarys-ca.edu to arrange a confidential appointment to discuss accommodation
guidelines and available services. Additional information regarding the services available may be
found at the following address on the Saint Mary’s website: http://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sds
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