CRW 4320 Kirby Fall 2022

In A Few Good Voices In My Head, Ted Solotaroff says that a piece of writing is a writer’s “only way to organize and to some extent comprehend life’s fullness and perplexity.” In this class we’ll be studying and writing that kind of poem in a format that departs from the traditional workshop set-up.

The usual workshop method works fine, but here we’ll begin by front-loading craft lessons in the first month. What this means is that I’ll present around 40 very different craft poems that have in common Solotaroff’s two principles, the organization and at least partial understanding of some significant experience. I’ll start having conferences immediately, you’ll be paired with a series of rotating partners, and after I present the craft poems, we’ll alternate between select students giving 20-minute readings of their work to the rest of the class and roundtable discussions of particular poems presented by individual students.

So put your helmet on! Knowledge is going to fly at you from six directions: craft poems, roundtable poems, peer poems, a get-acquainted conference, two comprehensive conferences, poem swaps with partners. The Republic of Poetry has a rich topography; we’ll see it all.

Course Pre-Requisites: CRW 3311 (Poetic Technique) and Application: Please send Kirby a few poems. Also, when did you take Poetic Technique, with whom, and what was your grade? And when do you expect to graduate?