English 205
Introduction to Creative Writing
Fall 2011
Poetry & Workshop Calendar
POETRY UNIT
Week 1: Introduction & Imagery
T Aug. 23
Class Introduction
Discuss Syllabus
Poetry Introduction
READ IN-CLASS: Jack Gilbert “Tear it Down” and “The Forgotten Language of
the Heart,” and Craig Raine “The Martian Sends a Postcard Home”
IN-CLASS EXERCISE: If E.T. were a Purdue student.
Th Aug. 25
READINGS: Mary Oliver “Getting Ready,” “Reading Poems” (pg. 1 – 12),
“Imagery” (pg. 92 – 108), “Workshops and Solitude” (pg. 112 – 118); Gregory
Orr “Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry,”
POEMS: Verse for the Senses: Elizabeth Bishop “The Fish” (pg. 95-97 in Oliver), LiYoung Lee “Eating Together” and “Eating Alone,” Matthew Zapruder “The
Prelude,” Rita Dove “Adolescence I & II”
IN-CLASS EXERCISE: Imagery Exercise
Week 2: Imagery & Sound
T Aug. 30
DUE: Poem #1 (bring in one copy for me)
READINGS: Richard Hugo “Writing Off the Subject” (handout)
POEMS: Feel, Smell: Marie Ponsot “Separate, In the Swim,” William Carlos
Williams “Smell”
Mining Images: Laura Jensen “Bad Boats” and “The Red Dog,” James Wright “A
Blessing” and “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island,
Minnesota”
IN-CLASS EXERCISE: Imagery Workshop
Th Sept. 1
READINGS: Mary Oliver “Sound” and “More Devices of Sound” (pg.19-34)
POEMS: Sound: Kevin Young “Expecting,” Sylvia Plath “Daddy,” Langston Hughes
“Theme for English B,” Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Windhover,” Jean Nordaus
“He is Running”
IN-CLASS EXERCISE: From Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, “Repetition,
Rhythm, and Blues”
Week 3: Sound, Metaphor, & Simile
T Sept. 6
DUE: Poem #2 (bring in 20 copies for full workshop).
READINGS: from Marianne Boruch “On Metaphor,” Natalie Angier “Abstract
Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally”
POEMS: Like Life – Simile and Metaphor: Kenneth Koch “To You,” Sharon Olds
“Burn Center” Gerald Stern “I Remember Galileo,” Charles Simic “The Fork”
Image/Abstraction: Stanley Kunitz “Day of Foreboding,” Richard Siken
“Scheherezade”
Th Sept. 8
READINGS: Dorianne Laux “How a Poem Happens” (handout)
POEMS: Extending the Metaphor: Lisel Mueller “Love Like Salt,” Dorianne Laux
“Facts About the Moon”
Workshop 1__________________ 2____________________
3__________________
Week 4: Diction, Tone, Voice & Persona
T Sept. 13
DUE: Poem #3 - Group Workshop Poem #1 (bring in 5 copies)
READINGS: Mary Oliver “Diction, Tone, Voice” (pg. 76 – 91)
POEMS: Voices of delight and desire: e.e. cummings “since feeling is first,” Tony
Hoagland “History of Desire”
Workshop 4_____________________ 5__________________ 6
____________________
Th Sept. 15
READINGS: Academy of American Poets “Poetic Technique: Dramatic
Monologue”
POEMS: Delight and desire (cont’d): James Tate and “Same Tits,” Jack Gilbert
“Portrait Number Five: Against a New York Summer”
Personae: Anne Sexton “Her Kind,” John Berryman “Dream Song 1” and “Dream
Song 14,” Adrienne Rich “Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev”
Week 5: Line, Stanza, Form
T Sept. 20
DUE: Poem #4 (Bring 1 copy for me)
DUE: Critiques for Group Workshop Poems #1
READINGS: Mary Oliver “Imitation” (pg. 13-18); “The Line” and “Some Given
Forms” (pg. 35 – 66)
POEMS: Maggie Robbins “Suzy Zeus Sets Some Limits,” Kevin Young “Ode to the
Midwest,” Mary Leader and “Unheroic Couplets,” Donald Platt “Joy,”
Th Sept. 22
Workshop 7_____________________________
8___________________________ 9 ____________________________
10___________________________
Week 6: Line, Stanza, Form
T Sept. 27
DUE: Poem #5 – Group Workshop #2 (Bring in 5 copies)
POEMS: Sonnet: John Donne “Death, Be Not Proud,” Pablo Neruda “Sonnet
XVII,” Henri Cole “Oil & Steel”
Villanelle: Elizabeth Bishop “One Art,” Sylvia Plath “Mad Girl’s Love Song,”
Theodore Roethke “The Waking”
Workshop 11____________________ 12_________________
13___________________
Th Sept. 29
READINGS: Oliver “Verse That is Free” (pg. 67 – 75),
POEMS: Sestina: Miller Williams “Shrinking Lonesome Sestina,” John Ashberry
“Farm Implements and Rutabegas in a Landscape”
Free: Rae Armantrout “Form,” George Oppen “The Forms of Love,” Jane Kenyon
“Evening at the Country Inn”
Workshop
14________________15__________________16_____________________
Week 7: Form & Revision
T Oct. 4
DUE: Critiques for Group Workshop #2
READINGS: Sarah Manguso “Why the Reader of Good Prose Poems is Never
Sad”POEMS: Prose: Carolyn Forche “The Colonel,” Harryette Mullen “Black
Nikes,” Nicole Cooley “Breach”
Concrete: May Swenson “Bleeding” and “Women,” Emmet Williams “Like Attracts
Like,” Mary Leader “They Vibrate
Th Oct. 6
READINGS: Mary Oliver “Revisions” (pg. 109 – 111)
Read: Hugo “Nuts and Bolts” - Coursepack
Workshop 17__________________ 18___________________
19__________________
Week 8: NO CLASSES-OCTOBER BREAK
POETRY PORTFOLIO DUE - HEAV 442 on Monday, October 17 at Noon