San José State University Department of English and Comparative Literature ENGLISH 131: Writing Poetry, sec. 1 Fall 2014 Instructor: Prof. Alan Soldofsky Office Location: FO 106 Telephone: 408-924-4432 Email: [email protected] Office Hours: M, T, W 1:30 – 3:00 PM, Th PM by appointment Class Days/Time: M W 12:00 – 1:15 PM Classroom: Clark Hall 111 (Incubator Classroom) Prerequisites: ENGL 71: Introduction to Creative Writing (or equivalent); or instructor’s consent. Course Description Workshop in verse forms and poetic craft. Study of traditional and contemporary models. (May be repeated for credit.) Methods and Procedures • Students in this course will write and revise original poems, which class members will critique during the weekly in-class workshops. • Class will be divided into four student writing-groups whose members will post drafts of poems to Canvas for other members to discuss (on the Student Groups setting in Canvas). • Student Writing-Groups (one group per week) will have their members’ poems discussed in the weekly in-class workshop. • The workshop’s principal text will be class members’ original poems posted on our workshop’s Canvas and Blogger sites. • Verse forms and poetic craft will be taught through assigned readings from the required textbooks and from links to poems and commentary on the Internet. comprised of published poems, an online prosody workbook with commentaries and craft exercises, and links to poems and commentaries (sometimes including audio and video files of poets reading. • The class will be divided into 4 student writing-groups (6 or 7 students per group) to discuss first/early drafts of poems. • Weekly in-class and online discussions of verse craft and prosody. See course calendar attached to the syllabus. English 131: Writing Poetry Fall 2014 Page 1 of 25 • Students will produce a finished portfolio of at least 9 poems, which will be submitted to the instructor (in draft) at regular intervals during the semester (see Due Dates). • Poems read to be read in class will be listed in a PLAYLIST, and will be projected onto the main screen and Smartboards of the Incubator Classroom Digital Poetry Workshop USING CANVAS: The ENGL 131: Poetry Writing classroom site on Canvas will serve as the class homepage for organizing and distributing course materials. Links to published poems and student poems in draft will posted on the course Canvas site. Student poems in draft will be posted on the student Writing Group Discussion tool on Canvas. (You will only be able to view draft poems on Canvas by the group to which you are assigned.) The ENGL 131: Poetry Writing home page is found at: https://sjsu.instructure.com/courses/1116002. You should keep drafts and revisions of poems in your ePortfolio on Canvas. (To read more about how to set up an ePortfolio click here.) WORKSHOPPING POEMS ON BLOGGER: You will post poems to workshop (new and revised) on the ENGL 131 Blogger site. We will workshop students’ poems in a regular “batting order” determined by discussing work by one student writing group per week (see course calendar). We will use the high resolution LCD projector and interactive “Smart Board” technology in the Incubator Classroom to view poems and other materials posted on Canvas and on Blogger in class. The instructor will select which poems posted by Writing Group members will be discussed in class for in-class workshop. You are required to post comments on 2 student’s poems that have been added to the Blogger workshop site each week. Students are also required to reply to two comments that other members of the class or the instructor have posted on the Blogger workshop site. To be workshopped in a Wednesday class, a poem must be posted on Blogger by midnight the Friday before. If you do not post a poem by midnight Friday, your poem will not be workshopped the next week, and you will not receive credit for that week’s Workshop activity. Student Writing Groups The class will be divided into four Student Writing Groups. Each Student Writing Group will have its own Group Homepage and group site on the ENGL 131: Writing Poetry classroom site on Canvas. For instructions on how to view your Student Writing Group on Canvas click here. Each Student Writing Group will use the Discussions tool for posting and commenting on new or revised poems posted by the group’s members. Discussion Requirements: Your Student Writing Group on Canvas is where you are to post drafts of new poems and revisions of poem—you previously had critiqued—for comments. You are to post two comments per week about the poems posted by your other Group members. And you are to reply to two comments per week about poems posted by your Group members. English 131: Writing Poetry Fall 2014 Page 2 of 25 Digital Device Policy: Students are encouraged to bring laptops and tablets to use in class, but are restricted from reading Facebook and non-class related email during class meetings. The IC (CL 111) has MacBooks and new PC’s available to use in the classroom, loaded with software used in the IC. Course Focus: The Art of Attention The workshop’s emphasis will be on poetry as “The Art of Attention”: poems whose characteristics include closely observed details of the here and now that turn the world into words. In the workshop, students will read a practice writing poems of “layered perception.” Poet Donald Revell writes that poems are “presences…the consequences of vivid presentations.” He adds, “the poet reads the world with writing.” Poetry itself is a form of focused attention, prosody itself, being a technique for constructing containers for concentrated attention. For that reason, we will add the study of prosody to our workshop, for it sharpens the poet’s attention to the syllable and to the line. They are the building blocks of poetry just as atoms are the building blocks of the universe. Course Writing Requirements • Complete a final portfolio containing at least 9 poems in their finished versions by the end of the semester. • Post a minimum of 5 of your poems on the workshop’s Blogger site for class members to discuss and the instructor’s critique. • Revise at least 5 of your poems in response to their being discussed in the in-class workshop, by your writing group, or critiqued by the instructor. • Comment on drafts and revisions of poems by other class members posted on the workshop’s Blogger and Google sites. The minimum requirement is to post at least one comment per poem submitted by members of your own small group. If you meet this requirement, you also may be eligible to submit additional poems or projects for extra credit. • Have a minimum of four poems workshopped during class meetings (see your group’s rotation schedule). Workshop discussions will be led by the instructor (and visiting guest poets). • To become practiced at writing poems in free-verse and in contemporary fixed-form styles. • Complete at least one poem in a fixed metrical pattern, and/or one poem in a fixed rhymed or non-rhymed form. • Complete the weekly reading assignments on poetic craft. • Complete assigned weekly Discussion/Blog workbook assignments and prosody exercises. • Attend two poetry readings on or off campus during the semester (see calendar). Write a 250–word (minimum) thumbnail review of each reading. Include comments on at least two specific poems the poet read, identified by title. Look for a published text of the two poems, explaining through close reading why the poems work or do not to work for you. • The ultimate goal of the course is to help you become a more skilled poet. Your will learn techniques of close reading and prosody to facilitate you learning to write and revise poems more successfully. You will also improve your poetry by emulating the craft and style of poems by modern and contemporary masters that you study in the class. You will learn to English 131: Writing Poetry Fall 2014 Page 3 of 25 master craft of prosody by reading your poems aloud to others in the workshop, and through revision in response to comments you receive from your classmates and the workshop instructor. Learning Outcomes (SLO’s) Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to: Student Learning Skills/Knowledge Activities: Outcomes: Acquired: SLO 1: Read closely in a 1. Recognize various 1. Based upon close variety of forms, styles, elements of poetic reading and analysis, structures, and modes, craft—including comment on student and articulate the value elements of prosody (in poems posted on the of close reading in the free verse and formal workshops’s Blogger study of creative writing verse)—and how these and Google sites, (poetry). elements contribute to a offering critical poem’s purpose and comments, praise, effects, at the level of interpretation, and diction, image, and revision suggestions. rhetoric. 2. Write comments in 2. Identify various your blog or journal on modes, tones, forms, and published poems, styles commonly found analyzing craft elements in modern and and/or style or contemporary poems, as techniques they display, well as poems from the that were discussed in earlier Anglo-American the assigned reading. tradition. SLO 2: Show 1. Recognize the craft 1. Participate in small familiarity with major elements, formal group presentations on literary works (of techniques, and styles the craft elements and poetry), genres (styles), commonly associated styles associated with a periods, and critical with significant works particular work (or approaches to British, by prominent modern selection of works) by a American, and World and contemporary poets.