CRW5331-0001 – Spring 2027 – Hamby
How does one become a great poet? The craft portion of the class will be devoted to the tensions in the life of poets as they deal with doubt, fame, loneliness, family, friends, frenemies, enemies, poverty, love, heartbreak, and, of course, writing. We will be reading excerpts on Canvas of the letters of Horace, Ovid, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Dickinson, Rilke, Rimbaud, Sexton, Plath, Langston Hughes, Kerouac, and Ginsberg. I have a template of 15 tensions that you can use to guide your reading, but you are free to discover your own. I have left out some great poets (Whitman, Wordsworth) because they weren't great letter writers. The first part of the class will be devoted to discussing the letters in small groups and then as a class. The second part of the class will be devoted to a workshop of your own work.
For MFA students, this course satisfies 3 of the required 12-15 hours of writing workshops. For PhD students, it counts toward the 27 hours of required coursework.